WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 


."i.V'j-i.-i.'ja.-j:- 


DE 


BR  121  .H84  1919 

Hughes,  Frederick  Stephen 

Where  is  Christ? 


WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 


VhERE  IS  CHRIST? 

A   Question  for  Christians 


BY 

AN  ANGLICAN  PRIEST 
IN  CHINA 


WITH   A  FOREWORD 

BY    THE 

BISHOP   OF  EDINBURGH 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1919 


To  HIM  AND  IN  HIM 

To  Parents  who  brought  us  up 

To  Liberty  and  Unity 


FOREWORD 

WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

SOME  of  the  best  contributions  to  Christian  thought 
have  lately  come  to  us  from  the  Mission  Field. 
Such  books  as  Adventure  jor  God  and  Presence ^  by  the 
Bishop  of  Phihppine  Islands,  and  The  One  Christ,  by 
the  Bishop  of  Zanzibar,  are  examples  of  the  depth  and 
width  of  thought  which  are  gained  in  new  lands  un- 
fettered by  tradition  or  conventionalism.  And  in  this 
book  for  which  I  have  been  asked  to  write  a  short 
foreword  we  have  another  help  to  our  thinking  in  the 
great  question  put  to  us  by  an  Anglican  priest  in  China. 
After  he  had  won  high  honours  at  Oxford  and  practical 
experience  in  Oxford  House,  the  author  obeyed  the 
call  that  was  sounded  during  the  Pan-Anglican  year 
and  made  the  great  adventure  for  God  in  North  China. 
He  reached  the  land  of  his  adoption  to  find  his  life 
endangered  by  the  Revolution  in  191 1,  when  his  friend 
and  coadjutor  was  killed  by  his  side.  Some  years'  work 
in  the  country  villages,  south  of  Peking,  have  led  him  to 
feel  the  great  dangers  we  are  in  through  our  unhappy 
divisions,  and  in  this  book  he  throws  out  the  arresting 
question,  "  Where  is  Christ  ?  "  That  question  he 
feels  quite  rightly  cannot  be  fully  met  by  saying  He  is 
in  Christians,  because  Christ  must  have  corporate  as 
well  as  individual  expression.     It  is  just  this  wliich  is 

5 


6  FOREWORD 

la'cking.  We  want  to  know  where  He  is  "  in  relation 
to  the  Church  and  to  the  modern  world."  To  the 
bigoted  Roman  Catholic  such  a  question  would  argue 
the  failure  of  schism.  "We  know  well  where  Christ  is," 
he  would  say,  "  in  His  Holy  Church,  and  only  there  will 
we  find  Him."  But  this  arrogant  assumption  has  in 
these  years  of  war  received  a  rude  shock.  Never  has 
the  Church  of  Rome  seemed  weaker  in  the  eyes  of 
the  world. 

The  author,  in  presenting  material  which  he  hopes 
may  help  towards  an  answer,  feels  clearly  that  Christ's 
Presence  cannot  involve  any  limitations  of  time  and 
space,  and  that  it  must  correspond  to  the  widest  con- 
sciousness of  Christian  experience.  He  thinks  that 
the  Church's  failure,  manifested  by  its  divisions  and 
lack  of  influence,  is  "  a  failure  to  grow  up,  a  failure  to 
keep  up  with  the  facts  of  life.  The  past  has  eclipsed 
the  present.  Forms  and  institutions,  though  neces- 
sary, have  exercised  an  altogether  disproportionate 
influence,  and  Christ  present  in  the  Body  has  not 
been  able  to  express  Himself."  The  question  is 
pursued  with  eager  interest  and  force  from  chapter 
to  chapter,  and  is  set  forth  with  much  ability  and 
abundance  of  quotation,  with  strong  reasons  not 
only  why  we  should  think  it  out  but  along  what 
lines  the  answer  may  be  found.  Not  every  one 
will  find  himself  in  agreement  with  all  the  thoughts 
that  are  expressed.  That  is  neither  possible  nor  to  be 
desired  in  a  question  so  large  and  difiicult,  but  our 
gratitude  is  earned  by  one  who  with  originality  and 
insight  attacks  the  main  issues  and  rightly  demands 
that  all  those  in  positions  of  authority  and  leadership 
should  fearlessly  face  the  consequences  to  which  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  may  lead  them.     I  heartily  commend 


FOREWORD  7 

this  courageous  study  of  the  question  to  the  con- 
sideration of  my  fellow  Churchmen  throughout  the 
AngHcan  Communion— a  subject  which  is  of  para- 
mount importance  to  all  who  feel  that  things  that 
are  shaken  are  being  removed  in  order  that  those 
things  which  cannot  be  shaken  may  remain. 

GEORGE,  BISHOP  OF  EDINBURC^H. 


PREFACE 

THE  New  Testament  quotations  in  the  following 
chapters  are  taken  sometimes  from  the  Revised 
Version,  but  more  often  from  The  New  Testament,  a 
New  Translation,  by  Dr.  James  Moffatt.  What  we 
all  want  is  not  the  letter  but  the  spirit.  A  new  trans- 
lation such  as  that  just  named  seems  to  make  the  New 
Testament  a  new  book  :  at  the  cost  of  the  familiar 
sounds  we  gain  new  access  to  the  original  spirit.  Now 
this  is  a  notable  experience  of  missionaries  in  foreign 
lands,  especially  in  such  countries  as  China  and  Japan 
where  the  genius  of  the  language  is  utterly  different 
from  that  of  the  whole  European  family.  The  neces- 
sity of  turning  your  sentences  and  paragraphs  inside 
out  in  order  to  present  them  in  Chinese  form  involves 
the  necessity  of  turning  your  thoughts  inside  out  in 
order  to  find  the  right  presentment  to  Chinese  minds. 
In  giving  lessons  on  the  Gospels  to  keen  schoolboys 
who  have  grown  up  to  fourteen  or  fifteen  with  no 
knowledge  of  Christianity,  the  standpoint  and  assump- 
tions of  ordinary  English  lesson-books  seem  provincial, 
conventional. 

The  question  presented  in  this  book  seemed  to  arise 
out  of  a  class  of  Chinese  schoolmasters  studying  the 
New  Testament  for  the  first  time.  On  furlough  in 
England  I  put  it  to  several  friends,  and  found,  for  the 
most  part,  that  they,  like  myself,  were  not  ready  with 
an  answer. 

9 


10  PREFACE 

We  have  all  been  preoccupied.  To  one  viewing 
with  eyes  fresh  from  China  English  hfe  in  home  and 
Church  in  the  months  just  before  the  war,  preoccupa- 
tion seemed  a  deepening  feature.  Out  of  that  pre- 
occupation has  grown  this  greater  :  two  years  of  war, 
and  no  end  in  sight — no  end  of  international  hatred. 
What  have  English  missionaries  now  to  offer  to  sucli 
a  great  people  as  the  Chinese  ?  Surely  we  are  not  to 
win  them  over  just  to  our  ideas  of  Christianity.  That 
would  be  an  example  of  the  essential  devilry  of  pro- 
selytism.  No  :  the  question  for  them  and  for  us  is, 
Where  is  Christ,  in  relation  to  us  all  ?  Where  are  we, 
in  relation  to  Him  ? 

Begun  in  England  in  the  first  few  months  of  the  war, 
and  continued  by  degrees  in  the  interior  of  China,  far 
from  European  conditions  and  facilities,  these  few 
chapters  are  rough  and  incomplete.  There  is  far  more 
to  be  said,  which  can  be  better  said  by  others  :  and 
perhaps  before  we  say  much  more  we  may  get  at  the 
answer  to  this  Question  :  for  on  it  depends  all  the 
sequel. 

The  writer  professes  nothing  original,  nothing 
unique  in  these  pages.  It  is  a  sifting  of  old  materials 
rather  than  a  discovery  of  new  that  is  the  urgent  need. 
Two  writers  among  many  who  have  lately  sifted  out 
the  same  pearl  of  great  price  are  Bishop  Brent  in 
Presence,  and  Dr.  A.  W.  Robinson  in  Christ  and  the 
Church  :    a  Re-statement  oj  Belief. 

"  A  man's  religion,"  said  Carlyle,  "  consists  not  of 
the  many  things  he  is  in  doubt  of,  and  tries  to  believe, 
but  of  the  few  he  is  assured  of,  and  has  no  need  of 
effort  for  believing.  His  religion,  whatever  it  may  be, 
is  a  discerned  fact." 

This  book  is  addressed  to  fellow-believers ;    there- 


PREFACE  II 

fore  what  in  it  may  seem  egoistic  is  but  an  expression 
of  one  among  many,  who  all  draw  life  from  the  same 
Source,  and  live  it  each  for  himself  in  individual  reality. 
It  is  for' the  sake  of  reality  that  mention  is  made  of 
personal  experiences. 

It  is  addressed  to  fellow-believers  in  the  living 
Christ,  who  all  know  Him  as  their  Lord  and  their 
God,  but  see  not  yet  all  things  subject  to  Him,  even 
within  His  Church.  That  there  at  least  He  may  be 
supreme  is  the  hope  in  which  these  pages  have  been 
written  :  supreme  in  His  Church  first,  that  thereafter 
the  kingdoms  of  the  world  may  give  Him  their  alle- 
giance. 

Somewhere  in  China. 
Christmas,  1916. 

War  conditions  have  delayed  publication  of  this 
book,  and  thus  put  some  of  its  time  references  out 
of  date.  But  the  position  is  essentially  unchanged ; 
the  Church's  lack  of  vision  still  seems  to  require 
prescription  of  the  original  "eye-salve." 

May,  19 19. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I    The  Need  of  Answer 

In  view  of  His  apparent  failure         .  .  .19 

He  has  not  failed  us  individually       .  .  .19 

Just  on  that  account  we  want  to  know  where  He 
is  in  relation  to  the  Church  and  to  the  modern 
world  .......       20 

The  importance  of  concentrating  attention  on 
this  question        .  .....       20 

II    The  Gospel  Answer 

The  answer  cannot  involve  any  limitation   of 

time  or  space       ......       24 

Observe  the  importance  which  He  gave  to  this 

point   in   His   final   teaching,    preparing    the 

disciples  for  His  death  and  its  sequel    .  .       24 

Such  is  the  bearing  of  the  so-called  "  eschato- 

logical  discourses  "      .  .  .  .  •25 

Recent   eschatological    controversy   is   due    to 

viewing  things  spiritual  out  of  focus     .  .       26 

The  key  to  their  meaning  lies  in  the  nature  of 

Love,  operative  both  in  old  and  new,  both 

immanent  and  transcendent  ...       26 

The  perpetual  and  unfailing  Presence  of  Christ 

is  the  culmination  of  the  Gospel  story  and  the 

Gospel  teaching  .  .  .  .  .  .29 

Note  on  our  Lord's  Eschatology  (St.  Matt.  xxiv. 

and  XXV. >   .......       3° 


III     The  New  Testament  Experience 

New  experience  of  Christ  reunited  the  disciples 
after  His  death   ...,,.       32 

13 


14  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

III         On  this  experience  the  Church  was  founded,  and 

into  this  experience  converts  were  brought    .       32 

The  goal  of  human  hopes  had  been  reached       .       33 

Tradition  and  the  existing  order  worked  against 
the  new  Life 33 

The  first  Church  controversies  turned  on  ques- 
tions of  the  limits  of  the  fellowship  of  Life, 
and  were  ended  by  frank  recognition  of  God's 
present  working  .  .  .  .  -34 

New  Testament  theology  reflects  the  New  Testa- 
ment facts  of  experience  •  "in  Christ  "  ;  "  the 
Body  of  Christ" 35 

Christ  is  the  new  Creator  of  each  man,  and  is 
therefore  God     ......       36 

The  religion  of  loyalty.  Professor  Royce  de- 
scribes the  fact,  but  professes  ignorance  of  its 
cause.     Harnack  on  "the  Third  Race"       .       37 

The  New  Testament  experience  of  Christ  as  not 
only  sanctifying  individuals  but  as  making 
them  a  new  community  was  prolonged  into 
subsequent  generations  of  the  Church  .       40 

Why  is  it  now  regarded  as  a  phenomenon  of  the 
the  past  ? 40 

Notes  to  Chapter  III  : 

(i)  The  story  of  Acts  iii.    .  .  .  .41 

(2)  I  and  2  Thessalonians  .         .  .  '41 

(3)  Eschatological  language.         ...       42 


IV    Absentee  Christology 

Lapse  of  faith  in  Christ  has  led  to  the  formulation 
of  schemes  of  theology  which  treat  Him  as  an 
Absentee    .....••       43 

A .  Within  the  Church  : 

The  Ascension,  as  implying  Christ's  de- 
parture  ....••       44 

Pentecost,  as  implying  a  Substitute  for 
Christ 46 

Advent,  as  implying  that  the  Church 
must  wait  for  Christ         ...       46 

B.  Outside  the  Church  : 

Christ  viewed  as  only  a  man       .  .       48 

This  idea  refuted  by  the  progress  of 
criticism,  ,  ....       49 


CONTENTS 


15 


CHAP.  PAGE 

IV  Loofs'  summary  of  results  of  criticism  : 

two  views  discredited — {a)  that  Christ 
was   not   a   man,  but   an   imaginary 
deity  ;    (6)  that  Christ  was  only  a  man      50 
Loofs  seeks  refuge  in  semi-divinity  .        5 1 

Two  reasons  for  flight  from  the  truth  : 

(a)  The    Church's    failure    to    reveal 
Christ  .....        52 

(b)  The  moral  challenge  of  the  Cross  .       52 
The  Mischief  worked  by  Absentee  Theology  : 

(a)  In  the  Church — disunion         .  .  .53 

(b)  In  society — competition  and  war    .  .       53 

(c)  In  personal  life — helplessness  .  .       54 
This  mental  habit  of  putting  Christ  away  from 

us  is  contrary  to  the  vital  religion  of  all  true 
Christians  .......       54 

V    Christ  in  God 

We  believe  in  Christ  as  the  divine  ideal  both  for 
the  individual  and  for  society.  Christ  is  the 
personal  meaning  of  the  individual  and  of 
society        .......       56 

Violence,  ignoring  and  violating  personal  mean- 
ings, is  anti-Christ       .  .  .  .  -56 

Yet  we  habitually  attribute  such  violence  to  God       56 

The  idea  that  things  are  thus  meaningless  betrays 
a  loss  of  monotheistic  faith  :  despite  the  teach- 
ing of  modem  science,  and  of  poets,  and  of 
Christ  Himself,  and  of  individual  experience       57 

Christian  faith  is  a  knowledge  of  what  facts  mean. 
The  meaning  of  the  universe  is  Christ :  Christ 
is  the  meaning  of  life,  of  me,  of  society  :  He 
is  what  we  all  are  for         .  .  .  .62 

Belief  in  Christ  involves  acceptance  of  this 
meaning  of  things,  in  heart  and  will     .  .       62 

Is  Christ  in  fact  thus  central  in  all  our  thought  ?        63 

A  Christian  is  at  one  with  God,  and  finds  fulness 
of  life  in  the  Divine  Society  ...       64 

Where  then  is  Christ  ?  Christ  is  in  God,  and  we 
find  Him  by  giving  ourselves  up  to  love  .       65 

But  misunderstanding  God  we  misunderstand 
man  :  hence  divided  Christendom  :  our  double 
failure  of  love    ,.,,,.       66 


i6  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

VI    Validity  of  Sectional  Experience 

We  acknowledge  the  duty  of  mutual  love,  but  in 
fact  are  ranged  against  one  another       .  .       67 

For  all  real  Christians  are  sure  of  the  truth  of 
their  doctrines  and  the  efficacy  of  their  means 
of  grace,  and  conclude  that  other  ways  must 
be  wrong    .......       67 

The  Mission  field  brings  many  into  new  appre- 
ciation of  their  fellow-Christians  :  as  does  the 
war    ........       68 

We  learn  that  God  is  not  tied  to  our  conceptions 
of  His  truth  and  grace        .  .  .  .68 

This,  however,  does  not  justify  disloyalty  to  our 
own  communion  .....       69 

Many  hope  that  foreign  missions  will  lead  the 
way  to  reunion  ;  but  the  hope  is  not  backed 
by  policy   .......        70 

Acknowledgment  of  the  facts  of  human  life  as 
being  the  acts  of  God  is  the  only  way  out  of 
our  trouble  ......        70 

The  need  of  a  theology  based  on  psychology  :  a 
study  of  the  actual  operations  of  Love  :  such 
was  the  earliest  Christian  theology         .  .        71 

Von  Hiigel's  psychological  analysis  of  religion 
into  three  elements,  the  institutional,  the 
rational  and  the  mystical    ....       74 

He  shows  that  every  man's  denominational  in- 
heritance is  inalienable         .  .  .  .76 

Mutual  recognition  of  all  denominations  is  there- 
fore a  necessary  acknowledgment  of  God         .        77 

Growing     evidence    of     this    acknowledgment. 
The  World  Conference  on  Faith  and  Order.       78 
The  Constructive  Quarterly  ...       78 

A  Roman  Catholic  acknowledgment     .  .       79 

A  Congregationalist  acknowledgment    .  .       80 

The  Student  Christian  Movement     .      .  .       81 

But  the  Church  remains  powerless  to  move  into 

this  larger  faith  in  Christ  present  with  us  all        81 


VII    The  Way 

We  have  found  the  Way  for  ourselves,  but  not 
for  Society  ......       82 


CONTENTS 


17 


CHAP.  PAGE 

VII        Human  Society  has  lost  its  way  because  the 
Church  has  lost  the  way  and  therefore  cannot 
lead  ........       82 

The  Church's  failure  is  a  failure  to  grow  up  ;   an 
arrest  of  growth  ;    a  failure  to  keep  up  with 
the  facts  of  life.     The  Past  has  eclipsed  the 
Present       .......        83 

Corporate  religion,  like  individual  religion,  may 
be  analysed  into  three  essential  elements : 
institutional,  rational,  mystical.  Christendom 
at  present  is  held  up  at  the  first  two  stages, 
over-emphasizing  either  the  institutional  or 
the  rational  element  of  religion  ...  84 
The  result  is  adult  Christians  in  a  stunted 
Christendom — the  deepest  tragedy  of  the  pre- 
sent war.  The  religion  of  loyalty  has  produced 
loyal  men  ;  but  the  ultimate  meaning  of 
loyalty  has  not  been  manifested  by  the  Church, 
because  she  has  not  made  the  presence  of 
Christ  the  dominant  factor  of  religion  :  the 
institutional  has  been  severed  from  the  mys- 
tical   87 

This  failure  of  Cluristendom  is  a  failure  of  faith 
in  Christ  as  God,  a  failure  to  see  that  He  is  Love 
and  Love  is  He.  .....       90 

The  Anglican  Communion  seems  to  a  peculiar 

degree  dominated  by  institutional  ideas         .       91 
Responsibility   for   the   failure   of  Christendom 
lies  with  all  who  hold  authority  in  the  Church. 
The  unfairness  of  our  ministry.     We  too  are 
called  to  self-surrender  to  the  living  Christ. 
We  must  surrender  our  self-important  notions 
of  responsibility.     The  root  facts  of  human 
life  are  in  Christ's  hands,  not  in  ours    .  .       91 

Not  that  forms  and  institutions  are  to  be  dis- 
carded, but  they  are  to  be  held  in  entire  sub- 
ordination to  the  present  Christ.       Compare 
the  Encyclical  Letter  of  the  Lambeth  Con- 
ference of  1908.     We  have  the  vision,  but  not 
yet  the  practice.  .....        95 

The  great  usurpation  of  Christ's  sovereignty  con- 
tinues until  we  give  ourselves  up  to  Love,  by 
personal  repentance     .....       98 

Then  Christ  can  work,  i.e.  work  through  us,  for 

B 


i8  CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

VII  He  is  working  already,     (a)  Call  to  witness  all 

who  have  taken  part  in  the  Pan-Anglican, 
Edinburgh,  Swanwick,  or  other  such  Con- 
ferences ;  and  especially  the  Fellowships  of 
Silence,  {b)  Call  to  witness  also  recent  ten- 
dencies in  the  political  field,  and  in  the  British 
Empire.  I.e.  Christ  is  at  work,  and  not  only 
"  here  "  or  "  there  "   .  .  .  .  .98 

We  have  to  bring  the  Church  into  line  with  the 
great  world  forces  which  are  the  mighty  work- 
ing of  God  ;  and  to  bring  these  forces  into  the 
Church 102 

The  Church  will  then  be  alive  as  the  Body  of 
Christ ;  catholic  because  local ;  manifesting 
infinite  variety  within  its  unity  ;  sensitive  to 
all  claims  of  personality  ;  in  union  with  the 
departed     .......      103 

The  voices  of  the  prophets  call  to  us  priests.     It 
is  the  Way  of  obedience  here  and  now  for  each 
of  us.     It  is  the  Call  to  the  Marriage  Supper 
of  the  Lamb       ......      108 

Postscript — "What  shall  I  do.  Lord  ?  "  .  .         .     112 


Where    is    Christ  ? 

A   QUESTION    FOR    CHRISTIANS 

CHAPTER    I 

THE  NEED  OF  ANSWER 

THE  apparent  failure  of  Christ  hardly  needs 
dwelling  on.  Christian  Europe  is  at  war,  and 
everything  that  Christ  came  to  save  us  from  is  going  on 
before  our  eyes.  The  tragedy  of  Christian  disappoint- 
ment hes  on  all  our  hearts.  And  the  failure  of  Chris- 
tianity has  been  spelt,  not  only  by  this  present  war, 
but  by  all  the  social  and  industrial  problems  growing 
in  complexity  and  virulence  from  year  to  year  and 
from  generation  to  generation.  Moreover,  the  child 
of  the  Church  brought  up  in  happy  faith  in  Jesus 
finds  in  adult  years  that  the  Church  of  his  baptism 
has  no  clear  voice  to  utter  in  face  of  modern  per- 
plexities, presents  no  united  front  to  modern  evils. 
It  is  probably  true  to  say  of  most  members  of  the 
Church  to-day  that  the  present  position  of  the  Church 
in  no  sense  answers  to  their  convictions. 

Yet  there  is  no  waning  of  our  faith  in  Christ.  To 
us  as  individuals  He  is  no  less  the  real  Saviour  than  He 
was  to  men  of  old.     Every  missionary,   every  mis- 

19 


20  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

sioner,  knows  that  His  power  fails  not.  To  soldiers 
on  the  field  of  battle  He  is  what  He  has  ever  been  to 
those  who  lay  down  their  lives  for  the  brethren. 

Thus  the  apparent  failure  of  Christianity  is  not 
in  individual  hves,  but  rather  in  the  world  at  large 
and  in  the  Church  as  a  whole.  It  is  the  believing 
Christian  that  is  in  trouble  about  Christ ;  the  man  who 
has  found  Christ  now  yearns  to  find  Him  in  the  new 
conditions  of  society.  The  question,  "  Where  is 
Christ  ?  "  is  asked  by  us  who  know  Him. 

At  least  it  surely  must  be  asked  if  we  are  to  keep 
things  in  proportion.  For  if  we  are  assured  of  the 
presence  of  Christ  we  need  not  be  much  troubled 
about  any  other  question  in  religion.  And  yet  re- 
ligious controversy  and  theological  discussion  seem  to 
revolve  around  a  multipHcity  of  topics  other  than 
this,  so  that  the  minds  of  Christians  are  apt  to  be 
diverted  from  this  central  point.  The  Kikuyu  con- 
troversy affords  a  striking  illustration  of  this.  One 
of  the  Bishops  who  took  part  in  the  united  Communion 
Service,  in  the  subsequent  account  of  the  proceedings 
concluded  with  the  statement  that  one  thing  at  least 
was  certain,  that  the  Master  Himself  blessed  the 
occasion  with  His  Presence.  Now  surely  it  is  note- 
worthy that  in  all  the  controversy  that  has  taken  place 
about  what  was  then  done,  while  many  points  of  doc- 
trine and  Church  order  have  been  debated,  no  atten- 
tion whatever  seems  to  have  been  directed  to  the  ques- 
tion whether  this  statement  that  Christ  Himself  was 
present  was  true  to  fact  or  not.  It  might  seem  that 
if  it  be  true,  then  there  can  be  no  further  question  or 
disputp  as  to  the  rightness  of  what  took  place  ;  and 
on  the  other  hand  if  it  be  untrue,  such  a  glaring  mis- 
statement on  the  only  question  that  mattered  ought 


THE  NEED   OF  ANSWER  21 

to  be  capable  of  some  kind  of  refutation.  We  surely 
have  not  got  to  the  point  that  everything  matters 
except  whether  Christ  is  with  us  or  not.  To  every 
one  of  us  Christians  it  is  the  one  thing  that  does  matter, 
and  it  is  the  one  thing  that  matters  to  the  Church. 
So  Father  Kelly  in  The  Church  and  Religious  Unity, 
explaining  why  Cathohcs  prize  the  Sacraments,  says  : 
*'  The  position  which  I  am  trying  to  explain  can  all  be 
expressed  in  the  words  '  I  want  Christ,'  and  I  mean 
that  in  just  the  sense  of  the  child  crying  in  the  night 
'  I  want  mother.'  "  No  substitute  will  do.  "  Lord, 
to  whom  shall  we  go  ?  "  "In  Thy  presence  is  the 
fulness  of  joy." 

We  all  "  want  Christ."  We  want  to  know  where 
He  is  in  this  modern  world  of  ours.  For  in  our  hearts 
we  are  sure  that  if  we  knew  the  answer  to  that  ques- 
tion we  could  all  go  forward  as  one  body  to  claim  the 
world  for  Him  with  no  less  confident  enthusiasm,  but 
with  far  greater  resources  at  our  disposal,  than  were 
possessed  by  those  first  Christians,  to  whom  the  answer 
to  the  question  was  not  in  doubt.  Are  there  not 
enough  Christians  in  almost  any  town  in  Europe  to 
sweep  it  clean  of  organized  iniquity,  if  only  they  were 
united  in  Christ's  service  ?  Even  in  this  vast  heathen 
land  of  China  the  number  of  Chinese  communicants 
outside  the  Roman  and  Greek  Missions  has  grown 
from  177,000  in  1907  to  270,000  in  1916.  What 
might  we  not  do  if  we  were  wholly  united  ?  What 
might  not  He  do  through  us  ? 

The  Bampton  Lectures  by  Peile  on  The  Reproach 
of  the  Gospel,  and  by  Hobhouse  on  The  Church  and  the 
World  in  Idea  and  in  History,  voiced  our  Christian 
dissatisfaction  with  both  Church  and  World  as  they 
are  to-da}^     But  do  wc  not    now  want    less  pathos 


22  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

and  more  confidence  in  our  tone  ?  That  our  Lord 
bravely  facing  the  initial  facts  of  His  tremendous 
enterprise  frankly  acknowledged  that  the  way  was 
narrow  and  very  few  were  finding  it,  is  no  ground  now 
that  after  His  tremendous  victories  in  every  land  we 
should  harbour  any  doubt  of  His  ultimate  victory 
over  all  His  enemies,  or  of  His  power  to  accomplish 
His  purpose  of  saving  the  whole  world. 

But  to  that  end  we  want.  He  wants,  a  different 
Church  from  that  which  is  now  in  evidence.  We  need 
to  get  rid  of  this  outrageous  contrast  between  indivi- 
dual faith  and  the  corporate  expression  of  it.  If  He 
is  my  God,  He  must  be  the  world's  God  ;  if  He  is  my 
Lord  in  personal  communion,  He  must  be  the  Church's 
Lord  in  immediate  personal  control.  If  I  know  where 
He  is  for  me,  I  must  know  where  He  is  for  society. 

Hence,  the  question  of  this  book.  This  contrast 
between  personal  faith  and  social  expression  of  it 
will  pursue  us  from  chapter  to  chapter.  We  shall  see 
(chap.  II)  that  the  purpose  of  Christ  was  to  abolish 
the  contrast  between  religious  authority  and  individual 
religion  by  the  fact  of  His  Presence  ;  and  that  the 
early  Church  (chap.  Ill)  by  faith  in  this  Presence 
resisted  the  tendency  to  this  contrast,  enlarging  its 
formularies  and  its  boundaries  to  correspond  with 
the  ascertained  facts  of  personal  experience  ;  for, 
being  "  alive  imto  God,"  it  was  alive  to  facts.  But  we 
have  to  acknowledge  (chap.  IV)  that  theology  has 
since  obscured  this  fundamental  characteristic  of 
Christianity  by  losing  touch  with  the  present  Christ. 
And  therefore  we  still  too  often  fail  to  understand 
God  (chap.  V)  or  man  (chap.  VI).  But,  thank  God, 
the  way  in  which  the  first  Christains  walked  is  still 
open  to  us  (chap.  VII).     Heaven  lies  about  us,  not 


THE  NEED  OF   ANSWER  23 

only  ill  our  infancy.  That  each  of  us  who  have  any 
part  or  lot  in  Church  Government  may  realize  our 
responsibility  for  the  hell  on  earth  that  might  be 
heaven  is  the  repentant  hope  of  the  writer  of  these 
pages.  Is  it  not  for  this  that  the  National  Mission 
has  come  upon  us  ? 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  GOSPEL  ANSWER 

"  "^T  THERE  is  Christ  ?  "  It  is  immediately 
VV  obvious  that  we  cannot  deal  with  this 
question  literally  as  implying  spatial  limitation.  *'  If 
any  man  shall  say  unto  you,  '  Lo,  here  is  Christ,'  or 
'  there/  believe  it  not."  As  Christians  we  all  realize 
that  the  presence  and  working  of  Christ  is  not  limited 
by  any  material  obstacle.  When  we  speak  of  the 
presence  or  absence  of  Christ,  therefore,  we  are  thinking 
not  of  material  but  of  spiritual  conditions,  conditions 
which  transcend  time  and  space. 

Obvious  as  this  point  is,  however,  it  seems  well  to 
study  afresh  the  attention  which  our  Lord  directed 
to  it  during  the  closing  hours  of  His  earthly  hfe. 

What  was  needed  during  those  few  days  which  take 
such  a  large  place  in  the  Gospel  narratives  ?  The 
need  He  saw  was  to  prepare  His  disciples  for  His 
death.  That  death  was  to  be  no  dramatic  perform- 
ance ;  it  was  to  be  the  grim  reality  of  the  real  death 
that  ends  the  familiar  modes  of  intercourse  and  makes 
the  great  change  in  the  personal  relationship  of  those 
who  love.  More  particularly  for  Him  and  for  them  it 
meant  the  change  in  the  meaning  of  His  Lordship. 
No  longer  would  He  be  among  them  in  the  guise  of 
the  local  and  temporal  Messiah  of  the  Jews  :  He  was 
to  be  the  universal  and  eternal  Saviour. 

24 


THE  GOSPEL  ANSWER  25 

This  new  faith  was  taught  mainly  by  the  act — by 
the  death  He  died.     But  since  the  lesson  of  death  is 
more  often  misread  by  us  men  than  any  other  lesson 
we  have  to  learn,  our  Lord  set  Himself  to  help  the  dis- 
ciples by  interpreting  beforehand  the  meaning  of  the 
coming   change,    "  that    their   hearts   might    not    be 
troubled,"  "  that  His  J03/  might  be  within  them  and 
their  joy  complete.'"     "  He  had  loved  His  own  in  this 
world,  and  He  loved  them  to  the  end."     This  teaching, 
of  such  primary  importance  to  all  the  first  Christians 
who  experienced  the  transition  from  the  local  national 
faith  to  the  catholic  faith,  naturally  takes  a  prominent 
place  in  each  of  the  Gospels,  in  the  first  three  no  less 
than  in  the  fourth  Gospel.     For  this  surely  is  the 
purpose  of  the  so-called  eschatological  discourses  in 
St.  Mark  xiii.  and  the  parallel  passages.     These  eschato- 
logical passages    have  in  recent    years  been    largely 
ignored    or    discounted    by    "  Hberal "    theologians. 
Their  attention  has  been  focussed  on  the  ethical  and 
social  teachings  of  Jesus,  which  enable  them  to  repre- 
sent Him  as  the  initiator  of  those  ideals  of  social 
reform  on  which  their  hearts  are  set.     Believing  in 
the  steady  progress  of  the  race  by  means  of  social 
amelioration  and  reform,  towards  the  removal  of  all 
human  ills,  they  like  to  see  in  Jesus  the  exponent  of 
such  sane  principles  ;   and  they  have  therefore  tended 
to  slur  over  those  parts  of    the  Gospels  which  seem 
to  repesenc  Him  as    foretelling  cataclysmal    changes 
independent  of  human  effort.     Such  writers    are  apt 
to  be  uncertain  or  even  negative  on  the  subject  of 
Christ's   Divinity.^     But    the   tendency   to    minimize 
one  part  of  the  evidence  has  now  brought  its  natural 
reaction,  and  we  have  writers  who  repudiate  the  picture 
1  See  below,  chap.  IV. 


26  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

of  Jesus  as  a  liberal  reformer  of  the  modern  type, 
and  insist  that  He  carried  on  the  Jewish  hne  of  belief 
in  a  coming  Day  of  the  Lord  when  the  Kingdom  of 
God  should  be  established  by  a  catastrophic  inter- 
vention from  Heaven. 

Does  not  this  controversy,  like  others  in  the  history 
of  theological  thought,  afford  evidence  that  we  are 
viewing  the  things  of  the  spiritual  order  out  of  focus  ? 
What  is  the  discussion  ?  Is  salvation  by  evolution 
or  by  catastrophe  ?  By  human  growth  or  by  Divine 
intervention  ?  How  did  our  Lord  view  it  ?  What 
did  He  look  forw^ard  to  ?  Note  that  this  question 
concerns  not  merely  a  few  selected  passages  in  the 
Gospels,  but  the  meaning  of  all  Christ  came  to  do 
and  did.  It  concerns  His  revelation  of  God.  If 
then  we  are  to  understand  His  point  of  view  in  the 
matter,  the  first  essential  is  to  recover  and  hold  to 
more  of  His  thought  of  God — the  simple  but  all- 
embracing  thought  that  God  is  Love.  How  does 
Love  order  the  world  ?  How  does  Love  order  His- 
tory ?  How  does  Love  order  life  for  each  of  us  ? 
Love  holds  on,  lets  nothing  go,  makes  the  best  of 
everything,  is  true  to  all  the  past.  Yet  Love  is  always 
new,  new  in  devices,  new  in  surprises,  new  in  each  new 
experience  through  which  the  loved  ones  are  brought. 

The  experience  of  all  lovers  is  a  revelation  of  God  ; 
and  few  words  are  as  good  as  many  in  the  endeavour 
to  express  it.  The  fact  of  that  Love  as  the  ground  of 
the  Universe  is  the  basis  of  all  philosophical  specula- 
tions about  the  One  and  the  Many,  time  and  eternit3^ 
unity  in  diversity  ;  and  is  evidenced  by  modern  dis- 
coveries of  evolutionary  law,  showing  how  present 
life  is  built  up  out  of  the  past.  We  might  take  as 
illustrations  the  facts  of  recapitulation  in  embrj^ology, 


THE  GOSPEL  ANSWER  27 

or  the  modern  science  of  heredity,  based  on  the  fact 
that  *'  hke  tends  to  produce  hke,"  and  that  yet  "  no 
two  creatures  are  ever  exactly  ahke."  ^  Other  and 
higher  illustrations  are  suggested  by  the  Historical 
Method  as  apphed  to  all  departments  of  human  life 
and  thought.  "  No  age  can  hope  to  understand  its 
own  mind  and  temper,  its  purpose  and  ideals,  except 
through  a  study  of  the  past  from  which  it  has  sprung."  - 
The  basal  facts  of  life  are  the  operations  of  Love, 
which  always  uses  the  old,  yet  is  always  bringing  to 
light  new  possibilities  of  growth  and  progress. 

How  then  does  Love  work  in  human  history  ?  By 
evolution  or  by  catastrophe  ?  by  human  growth  or 
by  Divine  intervention  ?  From  this  modern  view- 
point, which  takes  in  all  times  and  all  peoples,  we  can 
see  that  God  is  operative  in  and  through  both — the 
growth  and  the  catastrophe.  Men  living  on  the 
level  stretches  of  history  when  all  seems  man-made 
tend  to  lose  thought  of  God  :  and  again,  in  the  terror 
and  the  darkness,  when  the  old  land-marks  are  blotted 
from  sight,  and  homes  and  kingdoms  are  broken  up, 
men  tend  to  despair  of  God.  But  we,  from  the  modern 
point  of  view,  can  trace  the  Hand  of  God  through  all, 
in  the  changeless  principles  and  laws  of  His  working  ; 
we  know  both  His  immanence  in  the  world,  and  His 
transcendence  of  its  circumstances.  The  modern 
scientific  view,  just  as  far  as  it  is  lo3^ally  accepted, 
frees  us  from  the  prejudice  of  local  relationships,  and 
the  narrow-mindedness  of  temporary  conditions,  and 
brings  us  out  into  the  broad  spaces  of  the  peace  and 
wisdom  of  God. 

1  See,  e.g.,  Heredity,  by  J.  A.  S.  Watson  ("The  People's 
Books,"  Jack,  6d.). 

~  Storr,  Development  of  English  Theology  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century. 


28  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

Now  we  Christians  are  aware  that  this  free  outlook 
on  life  is  our  insight  into  God,  as  Jesus  revealed  Him. 
We  come  back  then  to  the  point  that  this  view  of  God 
is  what  our  Lord  sought  to  give  to  His  disciples  and 
to  the  world. 

How  then  did  He  behave  to  the  local  and  temporary 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  His  day  and  nation  ?  First, 
He  was  conspicuously  loyal  to  them  ;  loyal  to  the 
traditional  hope,  passionate  in  His  devotion  to  Jeru- 
salem. But  also,  and  still  more  conspicuously.  He 
taught  the  new  fulfilment  of  that  old  hope,  the  new 
way  of  self-oblation  to  that  old  ideal.  For  His  life 
was  the  life  of  God,  and  His  teaching  the  truth  of  God. 
"  My  Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I  work."  Life 
and  teaching  made  known  the  living  God,  the  Father, 
with  Whom  the  very  hairs  on  your  head  are  all  num- 
bered. 

So  in  His  last  hours  we  see  Him  concerned  to  secure 
this  belief  to  His  followers,  through  all  that  might 
obscure  it  :  through  His  own  death  ;  through  the 
fall  of  Jerusalem  ;  through  all  future  persecutions, 
wars  or  troubles  of  any  kind.  And  belief  in  that 
love  of  God  means  belief  in  Him  present  with  them 
still,  despite  the  impending  change  of  relationship 
brought  about  by  His  Death.  The  old  fellowship  is 
to  be  continued  and  deepened  under  the  new  con- 
ditions. 

It  is  then  disastrous  to  proper  understanding  of  the 
Gospel  to  regard  our  Lord  at  St.  Mark  xiii.  as  abruptly 
forsaking  His  habitual  attention  to  present  spiritual 
needs  and  taking  up  the  role  of  Lecturer  on  Apocalyptic. 
The  concentration  of  attention  on  external  circum- 
stances is  precisely  the  common  human  error  from 
which  He  is  seeking  to  dehver  them  ;    the  error  of 


THE  GOSPEL   ANSWER  29 

splitting  experience  up  into  sections,  and  making 
bogies  of  these  lumps  of  misunderstood  facts.  His. 
thought  is  not  so  much  of  distant  events,  of  time  and 
space,  as  of  the  spiritual  experience  of  His  loved  ones 
in  the  trials  and  persecutions  that  He  knew  must  lie 
before  them,  in  the  near  future.  And  so  by  famihar 
parable  of  the  clouds  He  tells  them  of  that  Presence 
which  eye  cannot  penetrate  and  which  is  not  limited 
by  material  hindrances  of  earthly  distance.  To  the 
lonely  martyr  on  distant  lands  no  earthly  friend  can 
journey  to  the  rescue,  but  Christ  will  come  to  him  in 
ways  beyond  his  knowing.  Yea,  from  the  four  winds, 
from  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth  to  the  uttermost 
part  of  heaven  will  He  gather  His  elect.  The  same 
truth  is  impressed  by  that  other  striking  metaphor  of 
the  carcase  and  the  vultures  :  no  matter  how  solitary 
the  spot  in  which  the  dead  body  falls,  soon  and  with- 
out fail  there  gather  to  it  out  of  the  unseen  the 
ministers  of  God's  will :  even  so  Christ  will  find  His 
faithful.  "  Go  and  make  disciples  of  all  nations.  I 
will  be  with  you  all  the  time,  to  the  very  end  of  the 
world." 

Thus  interpreted  the  Synoptic  Gospels  are  at  one 
with  St.  John's  Gospel  in  representing  our  Lord's 
mind  during  those  last  hours  as  almost  wholly  given 
to  the  preparation  of  His  disciples  for  that  change  in 
relationship  which  was  to  mean  to  them  not  separation 
but  a  new  and  universal  mode  of  Presence.  "  I  will 
not  leave  you  forlorn  ;  I  am  coming  to  you.  A  httle 
while  longer  and  the  world  will  see  me  no  more,  but 
you  will  see  me,  because  I  am  living  and  you  will  be 
living  too.  You  will  understand,  on  that  day,  that 
I  am  in  My  Father  and  you  are  in  Me  and  I  am  in 
you.  ...     If  any  one  loves  Me  he  will  obey  My  word, 


30  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

and  My  Father  will  love  him  and  we  will  come  to  him 
and  take  up  Our  abode  with  him."  ^ 

The  universaUty  of  Christ's  Presence,  then,  is  what 
the  Gospels  make  both  the  culmination  of  their  story 
and  the  climax  of  His  teaching.  "  One  greater  than 
the  temple  is  here."  **  Neither  in  this  mountain 
nor  yet  in  Jerusalem  shall  ye  worship  the  Father." 
*'  Wheresoever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in 
My  Name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst  of  them."  For 
words  like  these  the  Jews  killed  Him.  He  was  sub- 
versive of  their  religious  position. 

Can  it  be  that  we  with  our  particularist  claims — we 
Catholics  who  think  that  others  are  outside  His  catholic 
body,  we  EvangeUcals  who  think  that  others  have 
missed  the  blessings  of  the  Gospel — can  it  be  that  we 
have  all  been  doing  what  the  Jews  did,  and  in  effect 
crucifying  the  Son  of  God  afresh  and  putting  Him  to 
an  open  shame  ?  Does  not  every  particularist  claim 
to  the  Christ  constitute  the  essential  refusal  of  Him, 
the  fundamental  denial  of  His  Godhead  ? 


NOTE  TO  CHAPTER  II 

OUR  LORD'S  "  ESCHATOLOGY  " 

Since  the  above  mode  of  interpretation  of  the  eschato- 
logical  teaching  of  the  Gospels  may  suggest  questions  to 
some  minds  used  to  interpreting  these  passages  otherwise, 
I  venture  to  add  here  a  suggested  analysis  of  the  teaching 
of  St.  Matthew  xxiv. 

1.  Do  not  be  misled  by  any  man  claiming  to  be  the 
Christ  (vers.  4-5). 

2.  Do  not  regard  external  troubles  as  the  end  :  they 
will  come,  trouble  on  trouble  :    but  the    Gospel   of   the 

^  St.  John  xiv.   18-23. 


THE  GOSPEL  ANSWER  31 

Kingdom  is  the  appointed  end  for  all  the   world  (vers. 

6-14). 

3.  The  fall  of  Jerusalem  is  inevitable  ;  but  God  cares 
for  you  through  all  that  is  to  come  (vers.  15-22). 

4.  Do  not  think  you  have  to  run  after  any  Christ : 
Christ  will  find  each  of  you  surely  enough  (vers.  23-28). 

5.  Earth's  days  of  misery  will  always  lead  direct  to 
heavenly  succour.  In  however  remote  a  spot  they  suffer, 
Christ  will  rescue  His  elect  (vers.  29-31). 

6.  Always  take  troubles  as  indicating  His  nearness 
(vers.  32-33). 

7.  This  will  be  found  true  in  the  experience  of  this 
generation;    and  is  an  eternal  truth,  not  transient  (vers. 

34-35)- 

8.  No  one  can  determine  beforehand  the  time  of  Christ's 
arrival ;  it  is  the  crisis  of  each  individual  life,  coming  un- 
perceived,  unexpected,  in  the  midst  of  preoccupations 
or  indifference.     Be  always  ready  (vers.  36-51). 

St.  Matthew  xxv. — -The  universal  import  of  the  three 
parables  in  this  chapter  has  been  expounded  by  many  a 
preacher.  Here,  therefore,  I  would  only  note  two  points 
as  following  up  the  thought  of  the  previous  chapter  : 
(i)  Our  Lord  is  dealing  with  universal  principles  of  the  moral 
life.  Cf.  verse  29,  "  To  every  one  who  has  shall  more  be 
given  and  richly  given  :  but  from  him  who  has  nothing, 
even  what  he  has  shall  be  taken."  (2)  The  personal  con- 
cern of  God  and  of  Christ  with  the  details  of  every  man's 
life. 


"If  we  would  be  loyal  to  His  teaching,  we  shall  not 
allow  the  bright  prospect  of  His  second  coming  to  blind 
our  eyes  to  the  reality  of  His  presence  with  us  all  the  days  ; 
nor  shall  we  strain  our  ears  so  eagerly  to  catch  the  sound 
of  the  arch-angel's  trump,  that  we  fail  to  hear  the  call 
which  comes  to  us  day  by  day  on  earth  :  '  Follow  Thou 
Me.'  "  (Conclusion  of  Primitive  Christian  Eschatology, 
by  E._C.  Dewick,  Cambridge  University  Press,  1912.) 


CHAPTER  III 
THE   NEW  TESTAMENT  EXPERIENCE 

CHRISTIANITY  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  an 
experience.  The  Bible  is  nothing  if  it  is  not 
an  expression  of  men's  real  experience  of  God  ;  and 
the  New  Testament  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  the  record  and 
interpretation  of  men's  actual  experience  of  Christ. 
That  experience  was  precisely  what  we  have  just  noted 
as  promised  by  Him  in  the  Gospels.  It  was  new 
experience  of  Christ  that  brought  the  disciples  together 
again  after  His  Death.  It  was  in  the  new  unity  of 
behef  in  Him  aHve  through  death  that  they  became 
imbued  with  power  from  on  high  to  go  out  and  claim 
the  world  for  Him.  They  proceeded  to  gather  into 
one  fellowship  all  who  accepted  their  declaration  of 
the  present  power  of  the  living  Christ :  ''  about  three 
thousand  souls  were  brought  in  that  day  "  (Acts  ii. 
41).  "  Brought  in  "  to  what  ?  Into  a  life  of  such 
unity  that  all  kept  together,  and  none  were  suffered 
to  go  in  want,  and  the  root  instincts  and  habits  of  self 
were  transformed  ;  and  into  a  life  of  such  power  that 
sickness  and  disease  gave  way  before  their  victorious 
advance  (Acts  ii.  42-47).  "  You  killed  the  Pioneer 
of  Life.  But  God  raised  Him  from  the  dead,  as  we 
can  bear  witness.  He  it  is  who  has  given  strength  to 
this  man  "  (Acts  iii.  15-16). 

32 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  EXPERIENCE      33 

"  Go  and  tell  the  people  all  about  this  Life  "  was  the 
Divine  commission  to  the  Apostles  that  made  them 
bold  to  obey  God  rather  than  men  (Acts  v.  20-29). 

This  experience  of  life,  new  life,  is  the  basis  of  the 
New  Testament :  a  new  life  which  men  could  see  being 
lived  and  expressed  in  all  the  manifestations  of  the 
unity  of  the  Church  ;  and  into  the  secret  of  its  source 
they  were  admitted  by  the  Christians'  preaching  of 
Christ.  Seeing  the  life,  men  by  faith  accepted  the 
announcement  of  its  unseen  Giver,  and  being  thereon 
admitted  into  the  fellowship,  themselves  experienced 
its  power.  Such  in  brief  is  the  history  of  the  early 
chapters  of  the  Acts. 

This  experience  of  the  living  Christ  brought  convic- 
tion that  the  goal  of  human  hopes  had  been  reached 
by  that  generation.  On  that  conviction  the  Church 
was  founded.  That  is  the  meaning  of  all  those  claims 
to  the  fulfilment  of  Old  Testament  prophecy.  These 
are  "  the  last  days  "  predicted  by  the  prophet  Joel 
(Acts  ii.  16-17).  The  old  ideals  were  now  being 
reaHzed.  So  we  read  in  these  chapters  how  the  fellow- 
ship grew,  the  fellowship  of  men  with  Christ  and  with 
one  another — the  one  Life  in  its  two  aspects.  ^ 

But  it  was  very  hard  to  keep  to  it.  Worse  than 
external  persecutions  were  all  the  inner  influences  that 
were  against  them  from  tradition  and  the  existing 
social  and  religious  order.  A  familiar  instance  of  this 
difficulty  is  Peter  at  Antioch  (Gal.  iii.  11-14).  So  the 
earliest  controversies  of  the  Church  arose  out  of  this 
new  life  encountering  the  obstacles  of  the  old,  the  all- 
embracing  spirit  of  fellowship  opposed  by  traditional 
exclusiveness.  What  were  to  be  the  limits  of  this 
fellowship  of  life,  this  life  of  fellowship  ?     Who  might 

1  See  below,  p.  41,  further  note  on  the  stcry  of  Acts  iii. 


34  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

be  admitted,  or  regarded  as  true  members  ?  Debate 
was  ended  in  each  case  by  recognition  of  the  facts  of 
God's  working.  "  What  God  has  cleansed,  you  must 
not  regard  as  common."  ^  "If  God  has  given 
them  exactly  the  same  gift  as  He  gave  us  when  we 
believed  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  was  I — how 
could  I  try — to  thwart  God  ?  On  hearing  this  they 
desisted  and  glorified  God,  saying,  '  So  God  has  actu- 
ally allowed  the  Gentiles  to  repent  and  hve.'  "  -  "So 
the  whole  meeting  was  quieted  and  listened  to  Barnabas 
and  Paul,  recounting  the  signs  and  wonders  God  had 
performed  by  them  among  the  Gentiles."  ^  So  the 
Church  learned  that  fellowship  was  to  be  limited  by 
no  Divinely-given  privileges  from  the  past.  The 
present  working  of  Christ  transcended  all  tradition. 
The  Church  accordingly  advanced  along  the  lines  of 
God's  working.  In  early  days  it  was  indeed  known 
as  "the  Way." 

Behind  New  Testament  theology  lies  this  New 
Testament  experience  of  facts — facts  respected  as 
the  acts  of  God.  It  is  therefore  as  interpreting  the 
experience  that  the  theology  is  to  be  understood.^ 
The  worship  of  Christ  as  God  means  that  man  felt 
His  creative  love  constraining  them,  knew  His  creative 
power  transforming  them,  became  new  men  in  all  the 
relationships  of  life  and  in  their  inmost  being. ^  It 
was  men  whose  whole  religion  was  love  that  could 
enunciate  and  hold  the  doctrine  that  God  is  Love. 
It  was  men  of  a  fellowship,  all  governed  by  one  spirit, 
that  learnt  to  recognize  and  adore  the  Holy  Spirit 

^  Acts  X.  15. 

2  Acts  xi.  17,  18. 

■5  Acts  XV.  12. 

*  Cf.  Walpole,  Vital  Religion,  chap.  xiii.  and  passim. 

^  2  Cor.  V.  17  ;    Gal.  vi.   15. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  EXPERIENCE      35 

operative  in  them  all.  The  revelation  of  the  Trinity 
came  to  them  by  degrees  in  the  facts  of  their  life. 
Their  Christology  was  their  verdict  on  experience. 
The  conditions  of  Church  life  enabled  the  Apostle  to 
say  :  "  He,  Christ,  is  the  Head,  and  under  Him,  as 
the  entire  Body  is  welded  together  and  compacted 
by  every  joint  with  which  it  is  supplied,  the  due 
activity  of  each  part  enables  the  Body  to  grow  and 
build  itself  up  in  Love."  ^ 

A  profitable  line  of  study  of  the  New  Testament  is 
to  read  through  the  several  books  with  a  view  to 
noting  all  that  they  say  on  the  one  topic  of  Christ's 
relation  to  men.  For  most  of  us  it  will  bring  into  a 
new  and  startling  prominence  the  view  of  Christ  which 
we  may  perhaps  best  express  by  the  metaphor  of  the 
atmosphere  in  which  and  by  which  we  live.  "  In 
Christ,"  "in  the  Lord,"  is  the  familiar  form  of  St. 
Paul's  most  frequent  thought  of  Him.  This  is  the 
glorious  tonic  atmosphere  of  Church  life  in  each  locality, 
the  all-pervading,  all-embracing  atmosphere  of  the 
Church  universal.  It  is  to  St.  Paul  the  essential 
meaning  of  the  Christian's  status  :  "  the  saints  in 
Christ  Jesus  "  ;  "  the  faithful  in  Christ  Jesus  "  ; 
"  one  man  in  Christ  Jesus  "  ;  "  called  in  the  Lord  "  ; 
"  sons  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus  "  ;  "in  Christ  Jesus  I 
begat  you  "  ;  "  are  ye  not  my  work  in  the  Lord  ?  " ; 
"  blessed  with  every  spiritual  blessing  in  Christ." 
These  terms  mean  that  the  Christian  fellowship  was 
known  to  be  a  fellowship  with  Christ.  No  :  that  mode 
of  expression  is  and  was  inadequate  :  for  Christ  was 
not  merely  the  fellow  of  each,  at  their  side,  but  above 
and  around  them  all.  The  Spirit  of  the  community, 
which  possessed  each  of  them,  was  recognized  as  Christ's 
1  Eph.  iv.   15,  16. 


36  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

Spirit,  creative  in  them  of  the  Hfe  of  fellowship,  the 
fresh  spring  of  spiritual  wisdom.  They  had  experi- 
ence of  arrival  at  a  new  plane  of  consciousness,  in 
which  life  is  new,  at  peace  with  God  and  man,  free 
from  conventional  trammels,  filled  with  sense  of 
triumph.  The  essence  of  Christian  status  was  not 
individual  conversion  by  individual  Apostle,  but  entry 
into  the  all-pervading  life  of  Christ.  "  There  is  a 
new  creation  whenever  a  man  comes  to  be  in  Christ ; 
what  is  old  is  gone,  the  new  has  come.  It  is  all  the 
doing  of  the  God  Who  has  reconciled  me  to  Himself 
through  Christ  and  has  permitted  me  to  be  a  minister 
of  His  reconciliation.  For  in  Christ  God  reconciled 
the  world  to  Himself  instead  of  counting  men's  tres- 
passes against  them  ;  and  He  entrusted  me  with  the 
message  of  His  reconciliation."  ^  "  You  have  had  a 
taste  of  the  kindness  of  the  Lord  ;  come  to  Him  then 
— come  to  that  living  Stone  which  men  have  rejected 
and  God  holds  choice  and  precious,  come,  and,  like 
living  stones  yourselves,  be  built  into  a  spiritual 
house."  '^  "  You  are  the  elect  race,  the  royal  priest- 
hood, the  consecrated  nation,  the  people  who  belong 
to  Him,  that  you  may  proclaim  the  wondrous  deeds 
of  Him  Who  has  called  you  from  darkness  to  His 
wonderful  light — j^ou  who  were  once  no  people  and 
now  are  God's  people,  you  who  were  once  unpitied 
and  now  are  pitied."  ^ 

This  thrilling  experience  of  fellowship  produces  also 
the  Pauline  metaphor  of  the  Church  as  the  Body  of 
Christ.  "  As  the  human  body  is  one  and  has  many 
members,  all  the  members  of  the  bod}^  forming  one 
body  for  all  their  number,   so  is  it  with  Christ."  * 

1  2  Cor.  V.  17-19.         2  I  Pet.  ii.  3-5.         ^  i  Pet.  ii.  9,  10, 
4  I  Cor.  xii.  12.     Eph.   iv,    1-16. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  EXPERIENCE 


^4 


Presence  in  Christ  and  belonging  to  one  another  are 
two  sides  of  one  fact.  Christ  is  thus  new  Creator  of 
each  man,  and  stands  to  him  in  the  absolute  and 
ultimate  relationship  of  God.  In  thus  constituting 
the  final  unity  of  humanity,  He  is  seen  as  the  Final 
Cause,  and  so  too  as  the  Efficient  Cause,  of  the  universe 
(Col.  i.  14-23).  Everything  was  started  for  this  and 
is  working  towards  this.  vSo  the  New  Testament 
rings  with  the  note  of  loyalty — loyalty  based  on  experi- 
ence and  leading  each  loyal  member  on  to  ever  new 
experiences,  such  as  only  the  loyal  can  know.  ' '  Loyal, ' ' 
we  say  ;  and  in  this  our  day  of  Christian  dissension 
men  ask,  "  Loyal  to  Christ  ?  "  or  "  Loyal  to  Church  ?  " 
But  in  those  first  days  such  question  could  not  be. 
Men  who  knew  where  Christ  is  could  not  distinguish 
between  loyalty  to  Christ  and  loyalty  to  the  community 
that  lived  by  His  Life,  knowing  "  that  open  secret 
which,  though  concealed  from  ages  and  generations 
of  old,  has  now  been  disclosed  to  the  saints  of  God. 
It  is  His  Will  that  they  should  understand  the  glorious 
wealth  which  this  secret  holds  for  the  Gentiles,  in  the 
fact  of  Christ's  presence  among  you  as  your  hope  of 
glory "  (Col.  i.  26,  27).  In  his  recent  work.  The 
Problem  of  Christianiiy,'^  Professor  Royce  finely  works 
out  the  conception  of  Christianity  as  the  Religion  of 
Loyalty,  and  says  :  "As  to  the  central  doctrine  of 
the  Person  of  Christ,  it  was  inseparable,  in  the  mind 
of  the  Pauline  Christian,  from  the  doctrine  of  the 
living  Divine  Spirit  present  in  the  Church."  "  The 
exalted  and  Divine  Christ  was  explicitly  known  and 
interpreted  by  Paul  as  the  very  life  of  the  Church 
itself.     And  His  appearance  on  earth  had  its  redemp- 

1  The  Problefu  of  Chvistianity.      Josiah  Royce,  Professor  of 
History  of  Philosophy  at  Harvard.     2  vols.     Macm.,  191 3. 


38  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

live  meaning  through  its  power  as  the  work  of  the 
Founder  of  the  beloved  community."  ^  "  The  Church 
was  for  Paul  the  very  presence  of  his  Lord."  ^  But 
Professor  Royce  affords  a  notable  example  of  the 
tragedy  of  so  much  of  the  best  modern  thought,  which 
beautifully  exhibits  Christian  principles,  but  professes 
ignorance  of  the  Christ  from  Whom  they  proceed. 
Speaking  of  the  origin  of  the  Christian  community  he 
says  :  "  Personally  I  shall  never  hope,  in  my  present 
existence,  to  know  anything  whatever  about  that 
origin,  beyond  the  merest  commonplaces.  The  his- 
torical evidence  at  hand  is  insufficient  to  tell  us  how 
the  Church  originated."^  So  far  removed  is  his 
actual  experience  of  Christian  loyalty  from  that  of 
the  early  Christian  community  in  which  the  religion 
of  loyalty  originated,  and  in  which  there  was  no  doubt 
whatever  as  to  how  it  originated. 

Harnack,  in  his  Mission  and  Expansion  of  Chris- 
tianity, is  able  to  find  rather  more  definite  information 
in  the  historical  evidence.  Cf.  e.g.  the  following 
passage  (vol.  i.,  p.  103,  Eng.  tr.)  :  "  'Surely  He  hath 
borne  our  sickness  and  carried  our  sorrows  :  by  His 
stripes  we  are  healed.'  This  was  the  new  truth  that 
issued  from  the  Cross  of  Jesus.  It  flowed  out  like  a 
stream  of  fresh  water,  on  the  arid  souls  of  men  and  on 
their  dry  morality.  The  morality  of  outward  acts  and 
regulations  gave  way  to  the  conception  of  a]  life '  which 
was  personal,  pure  and  divine,  which  spent  itself  in  the 
service  of  the  brethren,  and  gave  itself  up  ungrudg- 
ingly to  death.  This  conception  was  the  new  principle 
of  life.     It   uprooted   the   old   life  swaying    to    and 

1  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  359,  360. 
*  Idem,   vol.   i.,   p.   104. 
'  Ibid.,  Preface,  p.  28. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  EXPERIENCE      39 

fro  between  sin  and  virtue  ;  it  also  planted  a  new  life 
whose  aim  was  nothing  short  of  being  a  disciple  of 
Christ,  and  whose  strength  was  drawn  from  the  life 
of  Christ  Himself.  The  disciples  went  forth  to  preach 
the  tidings  of  '  God  the  Saviour,'  of  that  Saviour  and 
Physician  Whose  person,  deeds  and  sufferings  were 
man's  salvation.  Paul  was  giving  vent  to  no  sudden 
or  extravagant  emotion,  but  expressing  with  quiet 
confidence  what  he  was  fully  conscious  of  at  every 
moment,  when  he  wrote  to  the  Galatians  (chap.  ii. 
ver.  20),  '  I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me. 
For  the  life  I  now  live  in  the  flesh,  I  live  by  faith  in 
the  Son  of  God,  Who  loved  me  and  gave  Himself  for 
me.'  Conscious  of  this,  the  primitive  Christian  mis- 
sionaries were  ready  to  die  daily.  And  that  was  just 
the  reasom  why  their  cause  did  not  collapse."  Har- 
nack  goes  on  to  show  how  the  vitalit}'  of  this  faith 
caused  the  Christians  to  be  differentiated,  both  by 
themselves  and  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  as  "  the 
New  People  "  and  "  the  Third  Race."  "  The  inner 
energy  of  the  new  religion  comes  out  in  its  self-chosen 
title  of  '  the  New  People  '  or  *  the  Third  Race  "^  just 
as  plainly  as  in  the  testimony  extorted  from  its  oppo- 
nents, that  in  Christianity  a  new  genus  of  rehgion  had 
actually  emerged  side  by  side  with  the  religions  of  the 
nations   and   of   Judaism.     It   does   not  afford  much 

^  "  The  Greeks,  Romans,  and  all  other  nations  had  passed 
for  the  first  race  {gemis  primum),  in  so  far  as  they  mutually 
recognized  each  other's  gods  or  honoured  foreign  gods  as  well 
as  their  own,  and  had  sacrifices  and  images.  The  Jews  (with 
their  national  God,  their  exclusiveness,  and  a  worship  which 
lacked  images  but  included  sacrifice)  constituted  the  second 
race  [genus  altevmn).  The  Christians  again  (with  their  spiritual 
God,  their  lack  of  images  and  sacrifices  and  the  contempt 
for  the  gods — which  they  shared  with  the  Jews — )  formed  the 
third  race  {genus  tertimn)  "  (p  .  273). 


40  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

direct  evidence  upon  the  outward  spread  and  strength 
of  Christianity,  for  the  former  estimate  emerged, 
asserted  itself,  and  was  recognized  at  an  early  period, 
when  Christians  were  still,  in  point  of  numbers,  a 
comparatively  small  society.  But  it  must  have  been 
of  the  highest  importance  for  the  propaganda  of  the 
Christian  rehgion  to  be  so  distinctly  differentiated  from 
all  other  religions,  and  to  have  so  lofty  a  consciousness 
of  its  own  position  put  before  the  world.  Naturally 
this  had  a  repelling  influence  as  well  upon  certain 
circles.  Still  it  was  a  token  of  power,  and  power 
never  fails  to  succeed  "  (pp.  277-8). 

The  New  Testament  experience  of  Christ  was  thus 
prolonged  into  subsequent  generations  of  the  Church  : 
experience  of  Christ  not  merely  as  sanctifying  and 
empowering  individuals,  but  as  making  out  of  indivi- 
duals a  new  community.  The  experience  of  Christ 
was  still  the  experience  of  being  "  in  Christ,"  of  find- 
ing one's  real  self  not  in  isolation  but  in  membership 
of  a  corporate  Personality.  Christ  lived  in  the  Church  ; 
the  Church  lived  in  Him. 

Harnack,  like  many  others,  in  giving  us  the  facts  of 
early  Christianity,  gives  them  as  phenomena  of  the 
past.  He  finds  them  not  in  the  Christian  experience 
of  to-day,  but  in  the  monuments  of  days  gone  by. 
The  revelation  of  the  eternal  God  has  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  bygone  event.  Can  we  wonder  at  this 
failure  of  modern  thought  when  we  consider  what  a 
mess  we  Christians  have  made  of  our  religion  ? 


THE   NEW  TESTAMENT   EXPERIENCE       41 

Notes  to  Chapter  III 
NEW   TESTAMENT  ESCHATOLOGY 

(i)  The  Story  of  Acts  hi. — The  main  matter  of  St. 
Peter's  speech  is  the  present  situation,  not  the  future. 
Accounting  for  the  healing  of  the  man  lame  from  birth,  he 
first  shows  that  in  Christ's  death  and  resurrection  the  God 
of  their  Fathers  has  fulfilled  what  He  had  announced 
beforehand  by  the  lips  of  all  the  prophets  (Acts  iii.  12-18)  ; 
and  then  urges  the  people  individually  to  realize  that  there 
is  nothing  more  to  wait  for.  "  Repent  then,  and  turn,  and 
have  your  sins  blotted  out,  so  that  a  breathing  space  may 
be  vouchsafed  you,  and  that  the  Lord  may  send  Jesus 
your  long-decreed  Christ,  Who  must  be  kept  in  Heaven 
till  the  great  Restoration  "  (vers.  19-21).  When  ?  Now  : 
for  these  are  the  days  that  have  been  announced  by  all 
the  prophets  (ver.  24)  ;  "  You  are  the  sons  of  the  prophets 
and  of  the  covenant  "  (ver.  25)  ;  the  prophet  whom  Moses 
said  "  God  will  raise  up  "  has  been  raised  up  for  you  (vers. 
22,  26)  ;  the  long-decreed  Christ  whom  you  have  hoped 
God  will  send,  has  been  sent  "  to  bless  you,  by  turning 
each  of  you  from  your  wicked  ways  "  (vers.  20,  26).  The 
evidence  of  Christ's  presence  afforded  by  the  healed  cripple 
is  used  to  convince  them  of  His  presence  to  receive  each 
of  them  (ver.  16)  ;  only  by  listening  to  Him  can  they  know 
what  life  is  (ver.  23).  The  speech  was  interrupted,  and  its 
immediate  result  on  the  hearers  is  not  stated,  but  we  can 
hardly  be  far  wrong  if  we  suppose  that,  for  some  of  them 
at  least,  the  case  was  as  later  at  Caesarea,  "  while  Peter 
was  still  speaking,  the  Holy  Spirit  fell  upon  all  who  listened 
to  what  he  said  "  (Acts  x.  44).  Iii  such  coming  of  that 
other  Comforter  Christ  Himself  came  (St.  John  xiv.  16-18). 

(2)  I  and  2  Thessalonians. — -The  Epistles  to  the  Thes- 
salonians  are  often  treated  as  a  mine  of  eschatological 
doctrine.  But  their  main  concern  is  not  the  mysterious 
future,  but  the  real  present.  St.  Paul  is  addressing  a  new 
little  community  of  Christians  situated  in  the  midst  of 
corrupt  human  society.  We  may  distinguish  three  leading 
ideas  in  liis  exhortation  : — 

(a)  We  have  the  glorious  prospect  of  Christ's  triunph, 


42  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

however  dark  things  seem  at  present  ;  we  all  look  for  that 
final  issue. 

(b)  But  for  us  who  know  Christ,  that  Day  of  the  Lord 
is  not  a  future  unrelated  to  the  present.  We  are  already 
in  the  Daylight.  That  Day,  therefore,  is  for  us  not  merely 
a  Future  to  be  waited  for  ;  it  is  a  Present  to  be  conformed 
to  (cf.  I  Thess.  V.  i-ii). 

(c)  This  realization  does  not  mean  acquiescence  in  things 
as  they  are.  The  battle  against  sin  has  to  be  fought  out 
(cf.  2  Thess.  ii.). 

The  Church  of  the  Thessalonians,  while  looking  forward 
to  Christ,  is  already  in  Christ.  The  position  is  that  which 
St.  Paul  elsewhere  describes  as  his  own  :  "  to  me  to  live 
is  Christ,  and  to  die  is  gain." 

(3)  EscHATOLOGiCAL  LANGUAGE. — Modem  scholars  have 
made  us  aware  of  the  abundance  of  Apocalyptic  literature 
in  New  Testament  times.  "It  was  inevitable  that  the 
Jewish-Christian  Church  should  think  of  the  future  in 
terms  of  Jewish  Apocalyptic.  The  language  and  details  of  its 
imagery  are  to  be  found  up  and  down  the  Epistles."  ^ 

We  are  therefore  unlikely  to  arrive  at  a  right  inter- 
pretation of  such  language  in  the  New  Testament  unless 
we  remember  {a)  that  our  Lord  was  bound  to  use  the 
current  terms,  but  in  using  them  would  give  them  (in  this 
as  in  other  cases)  a  fuller,  deeper  meaning  than  they  had 
borne  in  the  mouths  of  other  teachers  ;  (b)  that  His  first 
hearers  may  have  in  some  cases  failed  to  grasp  the  new 
meaning  and  thus  misrepresented  His  teaching  by  an 
unintelligent  literalness  ;  (c)  that  we  run  a  like  risk  in 
interpreting  the  language  of  our  Lord  and  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers  who  shared  His  free  view  of  time  and  eternity. 
A  prosaic  treatment  of  poetry  has  been  a  constant  bane  of 
theology. 

"  The  great  future  belongs  to  Jesus  Christ  and  to  His 
Church.  This  is  the  ultimate  meaning  of  New  Testament 
apocalyptic  "  (Swete,  The  Ascended  Christ,  p.  139). 

^  N.  Talbot,  The  Mind  of  the  Disciples,  p.  195  (Macmillan, 
1 91 4).     A  bracing  book  for  the  new  daj'-s. 


CHAPTER    IV 

ABSENTEE  CHRISTOLOGY 

*'  'T^HE  whole  Christology  of  the  Church  .  .  .  has 
A  been  its  effort  to  conceive  by  thought  the 
reahty  it  hved  on  in  its  faith  of  Christ's  saving  work 
and  presence  for  good  and  all"  (Forsyth,  The  Person 
and  Place  of  Jesus  Christ,  p.  330).  Yes :  if  the 
Church  had  been  governed  according  to  the  theology 
of  its  best  thinkers,  Christianity  would  surely  have 
escaped  this  degradation  from  its  high  estate.  But 
in  fact  a  great  deal  of  Christian  writing  and  teaching 
is  very  confused.  So  often  a  matter  is  but  half  thought 
through.  We  all  suffer  from  the  difficulty  of  com- 
passing eternities  with  terms  of  time  and  space. 
Speech  is  inadequate  to  experience  ;  more  particularly 
administrators  are  too  often  impatient  of  deep  thought. 
Much  current  Christology  seems  to  be  definitely  at 
variance  with  the  New  Testament  experience  of 
Christ.  The  Church  has  strayed  from  the  Way,  and 
her  experience  is  not  what  it  was  ;  or  rather,  is  not 
understood  as  it  was  then  understood.  For  here 
again  we  have  to  note  the  contrast  between  the  life 
experience  of  individual  Christians  anid  the  corporate 
expression  of  it  by  Church  authorities. 

Let  us  consider,  first,  theology  within  the  Church  ; 
then  secondly,  theology  outside  the  Church  :  both 
very  briefly. 

43 


44  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

Within  the  organized  Church,  much  current  theology 
has  hardened  into  a  scheme  of  Christ's  movements 
which  seems  to  involve  ideas  about  Ascension,  Pente- 
cost and  Advent  at  variance  with  the  Church's  funda- 
mental faith.  Let  us  look  at  each  of  these  three  doc- 
trines, fiiit  from  the  New  Testament  and  secondly 
from  our  modern  standpoint. 

TJie  Ascension  is  popularly  supposed  to  convey  the 
idea  that  Christ  departed. 

(i)  A  person  unfamiliar  with  the  Gospels  might 
infer  from  many  sermons  and  hymns  that  the  Gospels 
give  concurrent  testimony  to  the  Ascension  as  an 
externa]  event  involving  Christ's  departure.  In  fact, 
St.  Luke  alone  thus  records  it :  and  he  ends  his  Gospel 
with  the  disciples'  joy  and  begins  the  Acts  with  a 
reference  back  to  the  Gospel  as  recording  what  Jesus 
began  to  do  and  teach.  Moreover,  he  associates  with 
his  story  of  seeming  departure  a  promise  of  return, 
which  was  speedily  fulfilled  at  Pentecost  and  verified 
throughout  his  narrative. 

The  first  Gospel  ends  with  the  assurance  of  Christ's 
perpetual  presence.  The  appendix  to  St.  Mark  (xvi. 
ver.  19),  mentions  the  Ascension  as  an  article  of  faith 
rather  than  as  a  temporal  and  local  event,  and  connects 
it  with  the  statement  that  the  Lord  continued  to  work 
with  the  disciples  everywhere  ;  it  is  not  a  fact  of 
departure,  but  a  condition  of  power,  that  is  here 
asserted.  The  fourth  Gospel  gives  no  place  to  any 
idea  of  Christ's  separation  from  men. 

To  none  of  the  Gospel  writers  did  the  "  taking  up  " 
involve  an  end  of  Christ's  personal  presence  with 
His  disciples. 

(2)  Nowadays  we  all  understand  that  heaven  is 
not  a  place      "  Taken  up  to  heaven  "  is  a  symbol  of 


ABSENTEE  CHRTSTOLOGY  45 

spiritual  process.  It  involves  the  end  of  seeing,  the 
beginning  of  a  more  intimate,  less  contingent  associa- 
tion. "  As  long  as  our  purpose  depends  for  its  vitality 
on  any  circumstance,  though  that  circumstance  be  the 
Son  of  God  Himself,  it  may  be  affected  by  a  change 
of  circumstance.  Only  when  a  man's  purpose  is 
firmly  fixed  apart  from  any  regard  to  any  circumstances 
will  it  be  sure  to  stand  unmoved  by  all  chances  and 
changes.  So  long  as  the  disciples'  devotion  was 
governed  by  Christ  visibly  present  in  the  flesh  it  was 
unstable  ;  another  visible  presence  could  shake  it. 
Only  when  Christ  returned  to  dwell  in  them  by  His 
Spirit — only  when  their  whole  minds  and  wills  were 
become  moulded  in  the  fashion  of  Christ's,  only  then 
was  their  spiritual  life  secure.  And  we  have  to  ask 
ourselves,  which  stage  of  the  spiritual  life  are  we  now 
in  ?  Is  Christ  for  us  an  attractive  and  impressive 
Figure  who  lived  in  Palestine  two  thousand  years 
ago,  and  left  an  ideal  of  religious  and  moral  conduct 
which  we  intend,  if  possible,  to  follow  ?  or  is  He 
an  abiding  Presence  in  our  hearts  and  wills,  moulding 
our  purpose  and  controlling  our  impulses  ?  Is  He  a 
mere  example  or  an  inspiring  influence  ?  Is  He  for 
us  a  dead  Man,  or  the  living  God  ?  "  (W.  Temple, 
Repton  School  Sermons,  p.  126). 

"  When  the  mortality  of  Christ  was  finally  con- 
quered, He  delocalized  His  presence,  not  to  decrease, 
but  on  the  contrary  to  intensify  it,  to  make  possible  a 
new  and  inclusive  localization.  The  Christ  spirit 
represents  not  a  lesser  but  a  greater,  not  a  contracted, 
but  an  expanded,  self-personification  or  personaliza- 
tion. The  more  spiritual  a  personality  becomes,  the 
more  intensely  real  it  grows  to  be,  and  so  the  more 
widely  and  deeply  available.     His  presence  becomes 


46  WHERE   IS  CHRIST? 

an  atmosphere  and  influence,  without  losing  its  tran- 
scendent completeness  in  the  luxuriance  of  its  increased 
immanence.  The  presence  of  the  Paraclete  took  the 
place  of  the  localized  Christ  not  as  a  bare  substitute 
but  as  that  which  constitutes  a  superior  presence, 
including  all  that  it  held  formerly  and  adding  great- 
ness to  greatness,  riches  to  wealth.  In  going  Christ 
came  in  a  fulness  which  was  wanting  before  He  went, 
the  fulness  of  added  availabihty,  a  higher  degree  of 
presence  "  (Bishop  Brent,  Presence,  pp.  39,  40,  and 
passim.  Cf.  also  Swete,  The  Ascended  Christ, 
passim). 

Pentecost  similarly  is  popularly  regarded  as  the  com- 
ing of  another  than  Christ. 

(i)  The  one  passage  in  the  New  Testament  sugges- 
tive of  this  idea  of  a  substitute,  giving  Christ's  words  : 
"  I  will  send  you  another  Comforter,"  contains  also 
His  promise  :  "I  come  unto  you."  The  supposed 
separation  of  the  Spirit  from  Christ  is  ahen  to  the 
thought  of  the  New  Testament  (cf.  Rom.  viii.  9-1 1). 

(2)  The  idea  is  philosophically  intolerable.  It  is 
but  a  crude  outcome  of  our  human  separateness, 
which  allows  us  to  speak  of  Spirit  acting  apart  from 
Person,  or  of  Christ  being  "  impersonally  present." 
"  We  know  that  the  Son  of  God  has  come  "  (i  John  v.) 
is  the  New  Testament  verdict,  backed  by  Christian 
experience  through  the  ages. 

Advent  teaching  likewise  commonly  emphasizes  the 
idea  that  the  Church  has  to  wait  for  Christ 

(i)  The  Gospel  conviction  of  the  early  return  of 
Christ,  within  that  generation,  has  been  already  spoken 
of  (see  chap.  II,  above).  But  as  it  is  now  assumed  that 
He  did  not  return,  theologians  have  to  discuss  this 
mistake  of  the  early  Church,  and  even  of  Christ  Him- 


ABSENTEE   CHRISTOLOGY  47 

self.^  This  early  error,  with  its  sequel  of  disillusion- 
ment, has  become  such  a  commonplace  in  theology 
that  it  is  often  taken  as  a  datum  for  fixing  the  dates  of 
the  Gospels.  Is  there  any  evidence  of  this  tremendous 
experience  of  disillusionment  on  the  part  of  the  early 
Church  in  regard  to  this  central  item  of  its  faith  ? 
Is  not  the  central  fact  of  the  early  Church  its  experi- 
ence of  the  truth  of  God,  its  absolute  confidence  in 
Christ  ratified  in  every  trial,  the  victory  of  its  faith 
over  the  world  ?     (cf.  above,  chap.  III). 

(2)  The  Church  in  allowing  itself  to  suppose  that 
it  has  to  wait  for  Christ  is  applying  to  itself  teaching 
that  properly  applies  to  the  world,  i.e.,  to  human 
society  organized  in  ignorance  of  Him.  It  is  attri- 
buting to  God  the  deficiencies  of  men.  It  is  true  that 
"  the  whole  world  lieth  in  the  evil  one  "  ;  i.e.,  Christ 
has  not  yet  come  to  them  for  judgment  and  deliver- 
ance. But  "  we  know  that  the  Son  of  God  is  come,  and 
hath  given  us  an  understanding,  that  we  know  Him 
that  is  true,  and  we  are  in  Him  that  is  true,  even  in 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  This  is  the  true  God,  and 
eternal  Life."  Therefore  any  other  form  of  worship 
than  that  of  the  present  Christ,  in  whom  we  are,  is 
idolatry.  "  My  little  children,  guard  yourselves  from 
idols  "  (conclusion  of  i  John).  It  is  putting  fancies 
in  place  of  fact.  Certainly  there  is  a  waiting  for 
Christ  to  come  ;  but  certainly  there  is  also,  and 
primarily,  the  fact  of  His  having  come  and  being  with 
us  for  ever.  And  it  is  only  by  knowledge  of  His  having 
already  come  to  us  that  we  can  have  any  faith  in 
His  future  coming  to  the  world.-  Just  so  far  as  the 
Church  loses  faith  in  His  Presence,  she  loses  power  of 

^  Cf.  e.g.,  such  passages  as  Matthew  x.  23,  xvi.  28,  xxiv.  34. 
-  Cf.  Walpole,  Vital  Religion,  conclusion. 


48  WHERE   IS   CHRIST  i^ 

proclaiming  His  coming.  The  present  worldliness 
and  powerlessness  of  the  Church  are  due  to  her  putting 
herself  in  the  place  of_the  world,  waiting  for  Christ  to 
come.  The  rediictio  ad  ahsurdum  of  this  type  of 
theology  is  given  in  a  hymn  much  used  : 

"  And  so  the  holy  Church  is  here 
Although  her  Lord  is  gone." 

Absentee  theology  reflects  lack  of  experience  of 
Christ,  and  promotes  thought  of  Him  as  a  historic 
figure  of  the  past.  We  turn  then  now  to  a  brief  glance 
at  theological  writers  outside  the  organized  Church. 
For  first  we  have  the  Church  apart  from  Christ,  and 
then,  as  a  natural  sequel,  the  study  of  Christ  apart 
from  the  Church,  The  Church's  credal  assertions  of 
Christ's  divinity  are  of  no  avail  against  the  testimony 
of  her  life.  The  evidence  of  the  Church's  divisions, 
and  inadequacy  in  face  of  modern  conditions,  affords 
strong  presumption  to  the  outsider  that  she  has  not 
in  fact  found  in  Christ  the  Person  and  the  Power  of 
God.  I  take  as  typical  of  a  mass  of  theological  writing 
the  following  words  of  Professor  Moore  (Professor  of 
Theology  in  Harvard  University)  in  Christian  Thought 
since  Kant  :  "  There  are  two  religious  views  of  the 
person  of  Christ  which  have  stood  from  the  beginning, 
the  one  over  against  the  other.  The  one  saw  in  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  a  man,  distinguished  by  his  special  calling 
as  the  Messianic  king,  endued  with  special  powers, 
lifted  above  all  men  ever  known,  yet  a  man,  completely 
subject  to  God  in  faith,  obedience  and  prayer.  This 
view  is  surely  sustained  by  many  of  Jesus'  own  words 
and  deeds.  It  shines  through  the  testimony  of  the 
men  who  followed  Him.  Even  the  behef  in  His  resur- 
rection and  His  second  coming  did  not  altogether  do 
away  with  it.     The  other  view  saw  in  Him  a  new  God 


ABSENTEE   CHRISTOLOGY  49 

who,  descending  from  God,  brought  mysterious  powers 
for  the  redemption  of  mankind  into  the  world,  and 
after  short  obscuring  of  His  glory,  returned  to  the 
abode  of  God,  where  He  had  been  before.  From  this 
belief  come  all  the  prayers  to  Jesus  as  to  God,  all 
miracles  and  exorcisms  in  His  Name  "  (p.  147).  "  The 
problem  of  theological  reflexion  was  to  find  the  right 
middle  course,  to  keep  the  divine  Christ  in  harmony, 
on  the  one  side,  with  monotheism,  and  on  the  other, 
with  the  picture  which  the  Gospels  gave.  Belief  knew 
nothing  of  these  contradictions.  The  same  simple 
soul  thanked  God  for  Jesus  and  His  sorrows  and  His 
sympathy,  as  man's  Guide  and  Helper,  and  again 
prayed  to  Jesus  because  He  seemed  too  wonderful 
to  be  a  man.  The  same  kind  of  faith  achieves  the 
same  wondering  and  touching  combination  to-day, 
after  two  thousand  years.  With  thought  comes 
trouble.  Reflexion  wears  itself  out  upon  the  insoluble 
difficulty,  the  impossible  combination,  the  flat  con- 
tradiction, which  the  two  views  present,  so  soon  as 
they  are  clearly  seen  "  (p.  148). 

With  all  of  us  our  mental  standpoint  is  (or  should 
be)  the  outcome  of  our  experience.  If  therefore  it 
is  the  case,  as  it  seems  to  be,  that  God  is  not  united 
with  man  in  the  Christian  world  to-day,  as  He  was 
once,  as  we  hope  He  will  be  soon,  it  need  not  appear 
strange  that  thinkers  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  God 
and  man  were  ever  one.  We  even  acquiesce  in  that 
curious  phenomenon  of  modern  thought  that  behef 
in  the  divinity  of  Christ  has  been  associated  with 
conservatism  and  traditionalism,  and  commonly 
repudiated  by  so-called  liberal  thinkers.  The  refuta- 
tion of  the  so-called  "  liberal  "  view  of  Christ  has  been 
effected  not  so  muQh  by  any  evidence  of  the  Church's 


50  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

triumphant  life  to-day  as  b}^  the  further  processes  of 
that  same  hberal  research.  The  Church  of  the  present 
does  not  afford  the  irrefutable  evidence  afforded  by 
the  Church  of  the  past.  It  is  then  a  momentous  fact 
for  us  that  liberal  research  has  discovered  for  itself 
that  lower  views  of  Christ  are  untenable.  Though 
they  are  still  loudly  proclaimed  in  some  quarters, 
as  in  the  passage  quoted  above,  they  are  already  dis- 
posed of.  Critical  thought  is  thus  presenting  a  new 
challenge  to  the  Church  :  if  Christ  cannot  be  set  down 
as  a  mere  man,  can  the  Church  show  that  He  is  God  ? 
In  this  view  of  the  results  of  criticism  I  base  myself 
on  Professor  Loofs'  work,  Wliat  is  the  Truth  about 
Jesus  Christ ;  ^  and  I  hope  that  it  is  not  beside  our 
point  to  dwell  a  little  on  that  excellent  conspectus  of 
the  course  of  critical  thought  during  the  past  century. 
Men  have  been  very  busy  about  Christ,  and  we  ought 
to  know  the  outcome  of  their  thinking.  Loofs,  as 
it  were,  leads  us  out  of  the  maze  and  shows  that  there 
is  an  outcome  of  all  this  multitudinous  speculation 
and  research.  He  shows  that  there  were  two  main 
lines  of  attack  on  the  thought  that  Jesus  was  God. 
The  first  was  "  that  Jesus  was  only  a  deit}^  falsely 
changed  into  a  man  by  tradition  "  ;  i.e.,  that  He  was 
an  imaginary  being,  that  never  really  existed.  This 
view  now  claims  little  attention,  having  been  destroyed 
by  the  process  of  thought,  being  "  simply  disproved 
by  what  we  know  for  certain  about  Jesus  from  St. 
Paul."  The  second  and  more  important  view  was  that 
Jesus  was  only  a  man,  this  being  "  the  assumption 
necessary    for    historical    science."     But    now     this 

1  Lectures  a!  Oherlin.  By  Friedrich  Loofs,  Professor  of 
Church  History  in  the  University  of  Halle  (T.  and  T.  Clark, 
1913). 


ABSENTEE  CHRISTOLOGY  51 

view  "  cannot  prevail  before  the  tribunal  of  historical 
science  itself,  because  it  does  not  do  justice  to  the 
sources  and  is  not  tenable  in  itself."  ^  "  Science  has 
to  respect  reahties,  and  it  is  a  reahty  that  the  faith 
in  Jesus  the  Saviour  has  been  a  power  in  history,  and 
still  is  a  power  in  the  world  up  to  the  present  day. 
Historical  science  cannot  do  justice  to  the  sources 
with  its  assumption  that  the  life  of  Jesus  was  a  purely 
human  life.  It  cannot  draw  a  credible  picture  of 
Jesus.  .  .  .  The  presupposition  that  this  life  was  a 
purely  human  life  .  .  .  is  false  "  (pp.  159,  160). 

But  Loots  is  at  pains  to  show  that  this  conclusion 
does  not  lead  him  to  accept  the  "  orthodox  "  belief 
in  the  Divinity  of  Christ.  "  The  conviction  that  God 
dwelt  so  perfectly  in  Jesus  through  His  Spirit,  as  had 
never  been  the  case  before  and  never  will  be  till  the 
end  of  all  time,  does  justice  to  what  we  know  histori- 
cally about  Jesus,  and  may,  at  the  same  time,  be  re- 
garded as  satisfactorily  expressing  the  unique  position 
of  Jesus  which  is  a  certainty  to  faith.  It  also  justifies 
our  finding  God  in  Christ  when  we  pray  to  Him.  .  .  . 

1  "  It  is  bound  either  to  come  into  such  a  skeptical  attitude 
towards  the  sources  that  it  is  forced  to  give  up  all  hope  of 
obtaining  a  picture  of  the  person  and  the  activity  of  Christ — 
and  that  is  not  in  harmony  with  our  most  definite  knowledge, 
viz.,  that  there  existed  a  community  shortly  after  the  death 
of  Jesus  which  revered  him  very  highly  and  must  have  taken 
a  lively  interest  in  his  words  and  deeds.  Or,  if  it  puts  more 
confidence  in  the  sources,  Jesus  and  his  deeds  and  his  experi- 
ences must  seem  to  exceed  the  ordinary  human  measure  so 
far  that  the  only  possible  frame  for  his  self-consciousness 
must  be  found  in  a  highly  exaggerated  Messianic  conscious- 
ness of  majesty,  which  no  longer  agrees  with  normal  human 
life.  Then  Jesus  appears  as  a  religious  enthusiast,  and  it 
seems  natural  to  ask  whether  he  was  psychologically  sound. 
But  such  a  view  does  not  agree  with  the  deepest  and  greatest, 
and  therefore  certainly  most  genuine,  words  of  Jesus  which 
we  have  in  the  Gospels   '  (pp.  120,  121). 


52  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

My  last  refuge,  therefore,  is  the  term  which  Paul 
strongly  emphasi^zes  in  the  Epistles  to  the  Colossians 
and  Ephesians,  the  mystery  of  Christ.  And  what  is 
this  rnyster}^  ?  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the 
world  unto  Himself,  that  is  the  mystery.  It  would  be 
attempting  impossible  things  if  we  tried  to  under- 
stand the  historical  person  of  Christ  "  (pp.  239,  240). 

"  My  last  refuge,  '  says  Professor  Loofs  ;  and,  if  I 
may  say  so,  the  phrase  seems  to  me  to  betray  the 
fundamental  attitude  of  the  main  body  of  that  modern 
critical  and  philosophical  thought  which  does  not 
accept  belief  in  the  Divinity  of  Christ.  It  is  essen- 
tially an  attitude  of  flight.  It  is  flight  on  the  one 
hand  from  "  orthodoxy  "  and  "  ecclesiastical  inter- 
pretations "  ;  and  we  cannot  deny  that  orthodoxy,  or 
its  exposition  in  organized  Christianity,  scares  away 
many  honest  and  true  souls.  The  Church  does  not 
now  exhibit  that  original  light  spoken  of  in  St.  John 
iii.  19-21,  that  so  sifts  men  that  every  one  that  doeth 
ill  hateth  the  light,  and  cometh  not  to  the  light,  lest 
his  works  should  be  reproved.  But  he  that  doeth  the 
truth  cometh  to  the  light,  that  his  works  m.ay  be  made 
manifest  that  they  have  been  wrought  of  God. 

On  the  other  hand  this  attitude  of  flight  does  often 
involve  a  moral  failure  in  the  fugitive.  The  Cross  is 
still  foolishness  to  the  Greeks.  There  is  still  that 
fundamental  difficulty  for  human  thought  of  seeing 
in  the  Crucified  the  ultimate  truth  of  God  ;  the  diffi- 
culty that  lies  in  taking  up  my  cross  and  following 
Him  :  my  native  repugnance  to  such  an  ideal  of  life. 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  Professor  Loofs'  most 
valuable  summary  of  the  results  of  critical  study  of 
the  facts  of  Christ,  we  see  that  historical  science  has 
found  itself  unable  to  arrive  at  any  tenable  view  of 


ABSENTEE  CHRISTOLOGY  53 

Christ.  Professor  Loofs  himself,  has  hardly  found  a 
satisfactory  way  of  escape.  If  he  could  dismiss  from 
his  mind  the  fear  of  irrational  "  orthodoxy/'  and 
stand  and  face  steadily  that  "  mystery  "  which  St. 
Paul  emphasizes,  he  would  surely  admit  that  to  St. 
Paul  the  most  prominent  aspect  of  the  mystery  was 
the  mystery  of  "  Christ  in  you  "  (Col.  i.  27)  :  not  the 
fact  of  the  past,  that  God  was  in  Christ,  but  the  fact  of 
the  present  that  Christ  is  in  you  and  you  are  in  Christ. 
But  this  conception  takes  us  out  of  the  plane  of  his- 
torical event  on  to  the  plane  of  eternaJ  truth.  And 
although  ■  Loofs,  as  we  have  seen,  fully  realizes  the 
failure  of  liberal  criticism  to  confine  Christ  within  the 
categories  of  historical  science,  he  shrinks  from  that 
passage  to  the  eternal  which  those  take  who  acknow- 
ledge Christ  as  God,  and  like  Arius  of  old  prefers  to 
take  refuge  in  semi-divinity. 

Absentee  Christology  reduces  Christian  thought  to 
confusion.  It  muddles  the  testimony  of  the  New 
Testament,  partly  by  applying  to  the  end  of  the  world 
Christ's  teaching  about  return  after  His  death,  partly 
by  assuming  that  express  promises  of  speedy  return 
were  unfulfilled.  But  far  more  serious  is  the  fact  that 
it  muddles  life.  We  need  but  briefly  mention  three 
outstanding  features  of  the  muddle  of  modern  Chris- 
tendom : — 

[a)  The  ecclesiastical  muddle.  Divided  Christendom 
is  denial  of  Christ.  We  have  traditions  of  the  past 
instead  of  facts  of  the  present. 

[h)  The  social  muddle.  In  the  supposed  absence  of 
Christ  His  revelation  of  God  is  not  really  accepted  by 
Christians.  Other  facts  than  Christ  are  declared  to 
be  fundamental  to  human  nature.  It  is  assumed 
that  you  will  only  get  the  best  out  of  children,  or  out 


54  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

of  adults,  by  setting  them  against  one  another,  each 
for  himself.  So  the  Church  has  allowed  the  whole 
social  order  to  be  based  on  competition,  not  co-opera- 
tion :  on  self,  not  on  Christ,  Hence  war  between 
Christian  nations. 

{c)  The  personal  muddle.  We  need  but  ask  our- 
selves :  Are  we,  and  our  families,  so  living  in  Christ 
that  all  things  in  peace  and  order  move,  and  there  is 
immediate  remedy  for  misunderstandings  and  fric- 
tions ?  Christians  sometimes  say  that  "  in  God's  own 
good  time  "  they  will  be  reconciled  (meantime  they 
will  not).  The  faith  in  Christ  present  is  thus  muddled 
with  the  idea  of  His  temporary  absence.  W^e  lack 
that  sense  of  presence  of  the  eternal,  of  presence  in  the 
eternal  which  St.  Paul  expressed  in  the  phrase  "  in 
Christ,"  and  which  is  the  burden  of  St.  John's  Epistle 
and  of  the  whole  New  Testament. 

W^e  need  to  repent  of  this  habit  of  putting  God  away 
from  us.  The  Son  of  God  was  manifested  on  purpose 
to  end  this  aloofness  :  Emmanuel,  God  with  us.  Vital 
religion  consists  in  acknowledging  the  presence  of 
Christ.  By  thus  knowing  Him  I  have  eternal  life. 
Eternal  truths  become  my  personal  possession.  In 
religion,  to  individualize  is  to  eternalize.  I  and  God, 
the  individual  and  the  eternal,  are  brought  together. 

Here  Hes  the  secret  of  the  vital  force  possessed  by 
each  of  the  opposing  religious  parties.  "  Catholics  " 
know  that  they  have  an  impregnable  position  as  to 
the  reality  of  sacramental  grace  ;  for  every  real  Chris- 
tian among  them  knows  that  by  these  sacraments  he 
is  here  and  now  linked  to  the  eternal  God  ;  he  rightly 
repudiates  any  idea  of  them  as  mere  memorials  of  the 
past.  "  Evangelicals  "  know  that  the  Bible  is  the 
Word  of  God,  because  by  it  He  actually  has  spoken 


ABSENTEE  CHRISTOLOGY  55 

and  does  speak  to  them  personally  ;  every  real  Chris- 
tian among  them  rightly  refuses  to  let  questions  of 
historical  criticism  take  the  place  of  this  personal 
contact  with  the  living  God. 

The  personal  contact  with  God  and  Christ  is  sure 
enough  :  it  is  the  corporate  expression  of  it  that  is  so 
fatuous.  But  then  the  corporate  expression  re-acts 
on  our  individual  faith  ;  our  outlook  is  blurred,  our 
mind  muddled.  We  need  to  return  to  God,  to  put  us 
all  straight.  And  in  God  we  shall  get  the  final  answer 
to  our  question  ;  for  in  God  we  shall  find  Christ. 
This,  then,  is  the  next  point  in  our  discussion. 


CHAPTER    V 
CHRIST  IN  GOD 

THIS  book  is  addressed  to  Christians,  who  believe 
in  God  and  in  Christ.  We  know  God,  His 
being,  His  nature.  His  power,  as  revealed  to  us  by 
Christ.  We  know  Christ  as  the  universal  human 
ideal,  to  which  both  the  individual  and  society  are  to 
grow  up.  In  Him  both  the  individual  and  the  cor- 
porate personality  are  to  find  completion.  Christ  is 
Personality.     Is  He  not  ?  (Eph.  iv.  12-16). 

Violence  then  is  anti-Christ  :  "  violence  "  in  the 
sense  of  brute  force,  external  force  which  ignores  the 
inner  facts  and  meanings  of  personality.  For  the 
ignoring  of  personality  is  the  antithesis  of  love.  Some 
attribute  violence  to  Christ,  e.g.,  in  the  cleansing  of 
the  temple  ;  but  we  can  see  that  this  so-called  violence 
on  His  part  was  not  such  as  to  crush  or  injure  person- 
ality. Violence,  ignoring  personality,  is  anti-Christ ; 
for  it  is  misuse  and  misrepresentation  of  the  power  of 
God,  and  misuse  and  mutilation  of  the  capacities  of 
men. 

But  in  our  loss  of  the  sense  of  the  presence  of  Christ 
we  habitually  attribute  violence  to  God.  "  The  act  of 
God  "  stands  as  the  technical  term  for  the  loss  of 
property  at  sea,  by  fire  or  storm.  Though  in  our 
language  of  devotion  we  adhere  to  true  religious  faith 

56 


CHRIST  IN   GOD  57 

in  the  all-embracing  love  of  God,  from  which  nothing 
can  separate  us,  yet  in  our  everyday  language  we 
commonly  adopt  and  hear  a  very  different  note,  about 
the  common  accidents  (as  we  regard  them)  of  life, 
about  the  weather,  about  sickness.  So  it  comes  about 
that  tragedies  such  as  the  Italian  earthquakes  have 
formed  some  of  the  hardest  problems  for  the  faith  of 
the  modern  man.  In  a  world  of  blind  destructive 
forces,  where  and  what  is  God  ?  where  and  what  is 
Christ  ? 

The  trouble  is  that  whatever  our  individual  faith 
may  be,  we  corporately  have  lost  the  essential  Chris- 
tian view  of  the  world.  It  often  seems  that  our  faith 
is  not  really  monotheistic,  or  at  least  that  we  do  not 
understand  the  application  of  monotheism  to  the  facts 
of  Ufe.  Some  of  us  indeed  have  been  impressed  by 
teachers  like  James  Hinton,  who  as  a  man  of  science 
ably  maintained  that  the  apparent  inertness  of  nature 
is  reaUy  our  inertness  ;  that  what  we  regard  as  nature's 
deadness  crushing  our  life  is  really  our  deadness  clash- 
ing with  nature's  life  (see  e.g.  his  Man  and  his  Dwelling- 
Place,  passim).  But  our  dull  agnosticism  persists,  in 
spite  of  the  repeated  testimony  of  modern  scientists 
to  the  unity  of  the  universe  in  the  laws  and  the  love  of 
God.  To  quote  the  writer  of  a  paper  for  the  Pan- 
Anglican  Congress  (G.  F.  C.  Searle,  F.R.S.,  in  vol.  iii. 
of  the  Report)  on  The  Modern  Conception  of  the  Uni- 
verse :  "  The  unity  of  the  universe  makes  it  impossible 
to  suppose  that  we  can  ever  cut  ourselves  off  from  the 
operations  of  those  laws.  Did  we  but  reaUze  this,  we 
should  covet  earnestly  the  spirit  of  holy  fear.  When 
men  have  this  spirit  they  not  only  pay  reverent  atten- 
tion to  spiritual  things,  but  also  think  and  speak 
reverently  of  all  the  things  of  the  material  world,  as, 


58  WHERE   IS  CHRIST? 

for  example,  of  the  weather.  They  are  conscious  that 
they  are  dweUing  in  the  Temple  of  God,  and  it  is  the 
joy  of  their  lives  to  give  Him  their  worship  and  their 
obedience."  Dr.  A.  W.  Robinson  ^  thus  summarizes 
the  present  position  of  theological  and  scientific 
thought  :  "  There  is  reason  to  hope  that  the  bitterness 
of  old  controversies  will  not  be  revived,  and  that  we 
have  before  us  a  time  in  which  Theology  and  Science 
will  co-operate  and  no  longer  conflict.  With  deepen- 
ing insight  it  is  becoming  plainer  than  ever  that  the 
phenomena  of  life,  and  even  of  matter,  are  the  expres- 
sion of  a  more  than  physical  force.  Evolution  is  a  law 
under  which  a  forward  process  is  moving  on,  and  mov- 
ing up.  There  is  an  impulse  of  consciousness  working 
from  within,  and  there  is  a  spiritual,  as  well  as  a 
material,  environment  inviting  to  correspondence  with 
itself.  Freedom  and  power  of  choice  are  admitted  to 
be  present  in  regions  where  their  existence  was  for 
long  most  strenuously  denied.  Even  matter  may 
have  its  own  power  of  insistence  and  resistance — ^how 
much  more  mind  and  will.  This  consideration  may 
give  us  a  yet  clearer  clue  to  the  mysteries  of  failure, 
miscarriage  and  waste.  A  world  that  was  to  produce 
self-conscious,  self- determining  personalities  needed  to 
have  freedom  through  the  whole  of  its  development ; 
and  the  consequent  risk  and  possible  cost  were  inevit- 
able. Shall  we  not  be  led  to  admire  and  revere  in- 
creasingly the  wonder  of  it  all,  as  there  grows  upon  us 
the  sense  of  the  quietness  and  gentleness,  the  foresight 
and  the  infinite  patience  of  the  Being  of  beings,  who 
will  never  obtrude  His  presence  and  action  upon  us, 
just  because  He  would  help  us  to  be  our  own,  not  dead 

1  God  and  the   World  :    A   Survey  of  Thought,  pp.   104-5. 
S.P.C.K.,  1914. 


CHRIST  IN   GOD  59 

but  living,  selves,  and  would  have  us  rise  with  Him  to 
the  highest  things."     So  Tennyson: — 

"  Dark  is  the  world  to  thee  :  thyself  art  the  reason  why  ; 
For  is  He  not  all  but  that  which  has  power  to  feel  '  I  am  I  ?  ' 
Glory  about  thee,  without  thee  ;    and  thou  fulfillest  thy 

doom 
Making  Him  broken  gleams,  and  a  stifled  splendour  and 

gloom. 
Speak  to  Him  thou  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit  with  Spirit 

can  meet — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and 

feet."  1 

The  fact  that  in  our  ordinary  thinking  and  writing 
we  have  so  lost  the  romance  of  monotheism  accounts 
in  part  for  eager  welcome  given  to  Gitanjali  and 
other  books  by  Rabindranath  Tagore.  For  he  is  one 
who  dares  to  commune  and  have  fun  with  God  in  the 
facts  of  hfe.'- 

"  The  quietness  and  gentleness,  the  foresight  and  the 
infinite  patience  "  of  God.  So  say  scientists  and  poets, 
and  so  says  every  soul  that  knows  Him.  And  yet  we 
allow  ourselves  to  be  fooled  by  the  hallucination  that 
He  is  violent.  We  indulge  in  slipshod  newspaper 
views  ;  in  accounts  of  earthquakes  and  the  hke,  allow^- 
ing  our  attention  to  be  fixed  on  this  apparent  violence 
of  circumstances  viewed  externally,  and  not  on  the 
personal  attitude  and  condition  of  the  individuals 
affected, — not,  that  is,  on  the  presence  or  absence  of 


1  Tennyson,  "  The  Higher  Pantheism." 

2  Much  of  the  charm  of  R.  L.  Stevenson,  too,  is  of  the  same 
kind,  Cf.  especially  his  well-known  lines,  "  The  Celestial 
Surgeon,"  in   Underwoods,  beginning  : 

"  If  I  have  faltered  more  or  less 
In  my  great  task  of  happiness." 


6o  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

Christ  in  their  field  of  consciousness  ;  not  on  their 
understanding  or  misunderstanding  of  the  whole 
affair.  It  was  indeed  not  necessary  to  wait  for  modern 
scientists  and  poets  to  reveal  to  us  the  true  character 
of  the  universe.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  to  events 
of  this  kind  that  Christ  specially  referred  in  His  so- 
called  eschatological  discourses,  declaring  the  trans- 
formation, the  trans  valuation  of  them  by  His  presence. 
To  one  therefore  who  accepts  Christ's  view  of  things 
our  modern  newspaper  view  is  a  hopeless  misreading 
of  events,  presenting  insoluble  difficulties  to  faith  : 
being  an  attempt  to  understand  the  world  apart  from 
Christ.  It  might  be  supposed  that  a  Christian  was 
one  who,  by  reflection  or  experience  or  both,  had  been 
led  to  give  up  that  attempt  as  futile,  having  learned 
indeed  that  "  in  Him  all  things  consist."  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  normal  level  of  conversation  and  of 
thought,  in  the  Church  or  out  of  it,  is  to  regard  the 
events  of  the  world,  to  describe  them,  see  and  feel 
them,  as  external  catastrophes,  not  as  internal  personal 
experiences  of  the  infinite  love  of  God.  In  other  words, 
our  minds  are  out  of  tune  with  God.  If  we  were  in 
tune  with  Him,  either  these  things  would  not  happen, 
because  we  should  know  enough  of  His  laws  to  prevent 
them  ;  or  if  they  happened,  they  would  take  on  an 
utterly  different  aspect  and  character,  being  treated 
from  the  personal  and  not  the  impersonal  point  of 
view.  Throughout  this  book  I  am  trying  to  keep 
close  to  the  actual  facts  of  life,  and  therefore  of  my 
own  life  among  others.  So  here  perhaps  I  may 
illustrate  from  individual  experience  these  two  points 
about  catastrophes,  their  prevention  and  their  inter- 
pretation. Here  in  the  interior  of  China  my  "  parish  " 
is  constantly  suffering  from  floods,  caused  by  a  river 


CHRIST  IN   GOD  6i 

breaking  its  banks  and  making  new  courses  across  the 
country  year  after  year  ;  and  the  people  sit  by  and 
starve,  seeing  no  means  of  coping  with  this  devastating 
force.  We  coming  from  the  West  know  that  the 
trouble  is  not  inevitable  ;  that  if  the  people  or  their 
government  had  enough  of  the  spirit  of  love  to  make 
them  able  to  work  together  for  the  common  good, 
there  is  engineering  knowledge  and  skill  adequate  for 
preventive  measures.  The  catastrophes  could  be 
avoided  by  men  coming  more  in  tune  with  God.  And 
as  to  the  transmutation  of  external  catastrophe  by 
internal  reahzation  of  God,  I  can  myself  but  testify 
what  thousands  in  this  war  can  testify  from  far  wider 
experience  :  having  been  under  fire  from  Chinese 
looting  soldiers,  with  my  friend  shot  dead  at  my  side, 
I  could  grieve  neither  for  him  nor  for  myself,  and 
friends  who  wrote  about  the  "  awful  experience," 
"  too  dreadful  for  words,"  did  not  tally  with  one's 
own  sense  of  what  happened.  They  only  had  the 
newspaper  account  ;  I  had  the  experience.  This 
is  the  difference  happening  all  the  time  between  the 
external  view  of  events  and  the  internal  experience  of 
life.  And  every  Christian  has  this  knowledge  to  him- 
self, but  generally  forsakes  it  when  he  forms  his  ideas 
of  things  from  newspapers  or  enters  into  conversation 
with  others  in  the  terms  of  current  speech.  This 
knowledge  is  a  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  the  uni- 
verse. 1  It  is  more  than  knowing  the  facts  ;  it  is 
knowing  their  meaning,  both  what  they  mean  to  me 
and  what  they  mean  to  God  (for  I  can  only  understand 
them  in  proportion  as  I  share  God's  view  of  them). 
For  within  God's  facts  there  is  a  meaning,  an  answer, 
a  response.  And  that  eternal  answer  to  God,  the 
I  I  John  V,  20  ;    Eph.  i.  9,  10. 


62  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

eternal  meaning  of  His  universe,  is  Christ.  Christ  is 
within  God,  His  working  within  God's  working.  He 
on  the  page  of  history  is  the  answer  of  human  hfe  to 
God  who  made  it  :  He  is  the  meaning  of  Hfe.  He  is 
historically  the  revelation  of  the  meaning  of  God,  of 
God  within  God,  of  the  possibility  and  fact  of  the 
Cross  within  the  Divine  action,  and  within  the  Divine 
Being.  So  He  becomes  to  men  the  interpretation  of 
the  ways  of  God.  To  know  Christ  is  to  understand 
God.i  In  that  understanding  man  recognizes  a 
personal  Divine  meaning  to  himself  in  all  that  is  and 
in  all  that  happens,  and  recognizes  too  an  individual 
claim  on  himself  for  certain  action  within  the  general 
scheme  of  things,  a  claim  that  he  too  should  make 
response,  have  meaning,  to  God.  So  we  may  analyse 
belief  in  Christ  as  involving  (a)  emotional  embrace 
of  this  Interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  things  ;  (b) 
identification  of  will  with  His  Will  now  recognized  as 
operative  in  and  through  the  whole  system  of  the 
universe.     So  St.  Paul  spoke  of  "  the  God  Whose  I 

1  Christ  as  the  Meaning.  The  following  simple  propositions 
seem  true,  and  expressive  of  this  idea  : — 

He  is  the  meaning  of  man — to  God  and  to  himself. 

He  is  the  meaning  of  each  of  uS' — what  we  are  for. 

He  is  the  meaning  of  the  universe — what  it  is  for. 

He  is  thus  the  answer  to  God. 

In   each  of  us  He  is  our  answer  to  God. 

We  in  Him  make  corporate  response  to  God. 

A  man  in  Christ  makes  perfect  response  to  environment. 

The  Church  in  Christ  is  wholly  adjusted  to  the  action  of  God. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  all  such  abstract  state- 
ments about  Christ  are  based  upon  personal  experience  of 
Him.  Apart  from  personal  religion  they  are  meaningless. 
But  if  in  fact  He  is  my  God,  I  must  in  some  such  terms  express 
my  view  of  life. 

Only  believe,  and  thou  shalt  see 
That  Christ  is  all  in  all  to  tl  ee. 


CHRIST   IN  GOD  63 

am,  Whom  also  I  serve."  We  both  love  and  serve. 
Is  it  true  of  us,  of  you  and  of  me  ?  Do  we  both  love 
and  serve  ?  and  that  not  departmentally  but  uni- 
versally ?  Too  often  it  seems  that  we  live  our  lives, 
or  at  least  we  think  our  thoughts,  departmentally. 
In  our  worship  or  in  our  creeds,  for  instance,  how  much 
do  we  think  of  the  facts  of  God's  evolutionary  pro- 
cedure which  are  so  familiar  to  our  thought  at  other 
times  ?  Except  when  we  are  specifically  concerned 
with  Christian  Apologetics,  do  we  moderns  really  find 
God  and  Christ  central  in  our  ideas  of  science,  and  of 
art  and  of  history  ?  The  word  * '  God  ' '  seems  to  have 
been  eviscerated  of  meaning  in  modern  literature  and 
modern  conversation.  The  Practice  of  the  Presence  of 
God  is  what  we  are  all  needing,  what  the  whole  world 
is  needing  :  why  has  it  been  relegated  to  little  books 
and  little  times  of  devotion  ?  The  Cross  of  Christ 
gives  us  the  meaning  of  the  universe.  We  want  a 
devotional  grasp  of  the  whole  situation,  not  merely 
of  individual  forgiveness.  Let  us  pause  before  the 
Fact  of  the  Cross,  which  is  Jesus  Christ,  our  God. 

"  God  puts  His  world  before  you,  and  it  is  yours  to 
make  of  it  what  you  will.  It  is  there.  The  trees  of 
the  garden  in  which  you  live  may  be  much  or  maj^  be 
little  to  you  ;  they  may  be  '  everything  or  nothing. 
But  they  are  there.  And  then  here  stands  this  other 
fact,  a  fact  still ;  it  is  there.  Truth  holds  the  door 
open  for  the  future.  You  see,  there  is  something  more 
there  than  any  of  our  theologies.  As  Rendel  Harris 
once  said  to  me — we  were  talking  of  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria— '  No  one  sings,  "  How  sweet  the  name  of 
Logos  sounds."  '  You  cannot.  It  is  not  He,  do  you 
see  ?  But  there  is  He,  and  there  is  He  dying.  The 
fact  stands,  and  will  stand  :    the  great  fact  standing 


64  WHERE  TS   CHRIST? 

out  for  you  and  me,  to  judge  ourselves  by,  to  make 
what  we  can  of,  and  to  be  re-made  by  it.  At  any 
rate,  there  it  is  ;  beyond  all  theologies,  beyond  all 
dogma — the  fact  of  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ  upon  the 
cross.  And  it  is  for  you  to  settle  with  yourself  and 
with  God,  by  Whose  Will  it  was  there  and  you  are 
here,  what  you  make  of  it.  What  will  you  make  of 
it  ?     What  will  it  make  of  you  ?  *'  ^ 

It  has  hitherto  made  so  little  of  us,  so  little  of  the 
Church,  so  little  of  the  world,  because  we  have  been 
making  so  little  of  it.  "  Remember,  whatever  you 
make  of  Christ  and  His  death,  past,  present  and  future, 
are  one  story — it  is,  *  Jesus  Christ  the  same  yesterday 
and  to-day  and  for  ever, '  and  whatever  He  has  been  to 
those  to  whom  He  was  most.  He  may  be  again  to  you 
and  me — and  more  yet,  beyond  our  thinking."  - 

A  man  in  Christ  will  understand  God  and  what 
God  does.  That  understanding  puts  an  end  to  in- 
dividual isolation  :  each  comes  to  himself  as  a  social 
being,  linked  to  all  his  fellows,  partaker  in  the  one  Life. 
In  Christ  we  are  members  one  of  another,  because  we 
have  come  into  line  with  the  workings  of  God,  who 
works  in  us  mightily  ;  we  are  conformed  to  the  laws 
of  nature.  Therefore  in  Christ,  in  the  absolute  society 
that  is  in  Him,  all  human  faculties  have  opportunity 
of  fullest  development.  "  All  things  are  yours,  and 
ye  are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is  God's."  "  I  thank  my 
God  always  concerning  you,  for  the  grace  of  God  which 
was  given  you  in  Christ  Jesus,  that  in  everything  ye 
were  enriched  in  Him,  in  all  utterance  and  in  all  know- 
ledge."    "  In  Him  all  the  treasures  of  wisdom  and 

'  T.  R.  Glover,  in  Christ  and  Hitman  Need  (Addresses  at 
Liverpool),  Student  Volunteer  Missionary  Union. 
2  Ibid. 


CHRIST   IN   GOD  65 

knowledge  lie  hidden."     Here  are  the  proper  riches  of 
the  Church. 

Where  then  is  Christ  ?  Christ  is  in  God.  His 
presence  to  us  means  the  same  as,  yet  more  than,  the 
presence  of  God.  For  it  means  the  answer  of  God  to 
Himself  ;  the  world  or  the  man  no  longer  worked  hy 
God  only,  but  working  with  Him  voluntarily.  To  that 
presence  men  and  women  attained  who  gave  them- 
selves up  to  love  :  such  is  the  testimony  of  the  New 
Testament,  of  those  who  first  knew  Christ  in  Palestine, 
and  afterwards  knew  Him  in  God  :  and  such  is  the 
history  of  the  Church  through  the  ages. 

That  real  history  of  the  Church  has  not  been  and 
perhaps  cannot  be  written.  It  lies  not  in  the  events 
and  actions  viewed  externally,  but  in  their  inner 
meaning  to  the  actors  and  sufferers  :  not  in  circum- 
stances, but  in  the  life  that  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God. 
That  is  what  entitles  it  to  be  called  the  Divine  Society. 
That  alone  accounts  for  its  continuance  till  now,  in 
spite  of  all  its  sins  and  blunders  in  the  past,  in  spite 
of  all  the  inadequacies  and  muddles  of  which  we  are 
conscious  in  the  present. 

The  Church  still  exists  :  but  its  Ufe  is  enfeebled, 
because  we  have  so  largely  put  God  away  from  us. 
We  have  misunderstood  God.  We  have  neither  shaped 
our  minds  nor  tuned  our  lips  to  Immanent  and 
Transcendent  Love. 

Only  as  we  priests  and  ministers  of  the  Living  God 
return  to  Him  can  we  or  the  Church  or  the  world  be 
saved.  For  it  is  we  who  are  obviously  responsible 
before  God  and  man  for  the  corporate  expression  of 
religion,  and  for  its  inadequacy  over  against  the 
adequacy  of  personal  experience  of  Christ. 

Misunderstanding  of  God  is  bound  up  with  mis- 

£ 


66  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

understanding  of  men.  Misreading  the  divine  nature 
we  misread  human  nature.  FaiHng  to  see  Christ  in 
God,  we  fail  to  acknowledge  and  adore  Him  in  all  His 
members.  Hence  the  disunion  of  Christendom,  our 
failure  of  love.  "  He  who  does  not  love,  does  not 
know  God,  for  God  is  love." 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE  VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL 
EXPERIENCE 

WE  Christians  all  know  that  we  ought  to  love 
one  another.  By  baptism,  by  profession,  we 
too,  like  those  first  Christians,  have  given  ourselves 
up  to  love.  Our  trouble,  the  tragedy  of  Christendom, 
is  that  in  seeking  to  obey  the  Christ  Who  gave  us  this 
commandment,  in  trying  to  be  true  to  our  profession, 
we  find  ourselves  ranged  in  mutually  opposed  sections, 
between  whom  the  love  felt  is  httle  and  the  love  shown 
even  less.  We  Christians  are  all  (or  most  of  us)  so 
sure  of  our  own  position  that  we  cannot  allow  our- 
selves to  suppose  that  another  position  held  by  other 
people  may  be  equally  right.  We  have  all  been 
schooled  in  particular  doctrines  as  to  the  essential 
means  of  grace,  and  the  fundamental  conditions  of 
membership  in  the  Church  ;  and  more  than  that,  we 
all  know  in  our  own  experience  that  our  own  way  is 
right,  efficacious,  proved  by  the  working  of  God  in 
our  own  lives  and  in  the  lives  of  others  whom  we  reach 
and  teach.     If  not,  we  can  hardly  be  Christians. 

We  taste  Thee,  O  Thou  Living  Bread, 
And  long  to  feast  upon  Thee  still  ; 

We  drink  of  Thee,  the  Fountain-head, 
And  thirst  our  souls  from  Thee  to  fill, 
67 


68  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

Here  may  Thy  faithful  people  know 

The  blessings  of  Thy  love. 
The  streams  that  through  the  desert  flow, 

The  manna  from  above, 

"  Thou  dost  assure  us  thereby  of  Thy  favour  and  goodness 
towards  us,  and  that  we  are  very  members  incorporate  in 
the  mystical  Body  of  Thy  Son." 


From  childhood  up,  as  communicant,  as  deacon, 
priest,  lattedy  as  missionary,  all  I  am  and  know  and 
do  as  a  Christian  I  owe  to  my  membership  in  the 
Church  of  England.  My  communion  and  my  com- 
mission are  only  mine  through  the  faith  and  ordinances 
of  this  Church.  Until  I  came  out  as  a  missionary 
to  China  I  had  personal  acquaintance  with  hardly 
any  member  of  any  other  rehgious  body. 

But  an  eye-opening  experience  comes  to  many  a 
man  and  woman  sent  out  by  this  or  that  Church  to 
propagate  the  faith  in  a  heathen  land.  We  are  for  the 
first  time  brought  face  to  face  in  close  association  with 
men  and  women  of  other  denominations.  In  the 
direct  conflict  with  the  elemental  forces  of  evil  and 
ignorance  the  fundamental  attitude  towards  life  is 
the  one  thing  that  matters.  Association  in  great 
enterprises,  demanding  the  utmost  that  manhood  and 
womanhood  can  be  and  give,  reveals  Christ  in  a  new 
and  stronger  light.  The  war  has  been  serving  in  the 
same  way  to  bring  members  of  different  Churches,  ^now 
united  in  a  new  fellowship  of  service  and  sacrifice, 
into  this  new  attitude  of  mutual  affection,  and  respect 
for  each  other's  religious  convictions  and  practices. 
The  sense  deepens  that  ours  is  not  the  only  way  to  God  ; 
that  other  ways  are  valid  too,  in  that  they  are  in  fact 
what  they  profess  to  be,  effectual  means  of  grace. 

This  indeed  has  long  been  recognized  by  our  best 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE     69 

teachers.  For  example,  Bishop  Woodford,  in  an 
address  on  "  The  Power  of  Absolution,"  quotes  Bishop 
Andrewes  :  "  Gratia  Dei  non  alligatur  mediis  ;  the 
grace  of  God  is  not  bound,  but  free  ;  and  can  work 
without  means  of  Word  or  Sacrament  :  and  as  without 
means,  so  without  Ministers,  how  and  when  to  Him 
seemeth  good  "  ;  and  he  continues,  "  All  that  is  meant 
is  that  here  is  a  Divinely  appointed  channel  for  con- 
veying God's  pardon,  and  they  who  place  themselves 
under  it  may  be  sure  of  receiving  what  they  look  for."  ^ 
That  God  is  not  bound  to  His  own  laws  is  a  familiar 
but  unfortunate  way  of  expressing  this  truth  that 
there  are  facts  of  God  outside  our  scheme.  God  is 
not  tied,  but  we  are.  Why  are  we  not  free  to  come 
into  line  with  God  ?  Where  is  that  freedom  with 
which  originally  Christ  set  free  His  Church  ?  ^ 

But  here  comes  in  another  part  of  the  tragedy  of 
Church  History.  Many  a  man  or  company  of  men, 
moved  by  dissatisfaction  with  the  sectional  position 
of  their  religious  life  contrasted  with  the  catholic 
meaning  of  their  faith,  and  seeking  to  move  out  into  a 
wider  unity  of  Christians,  has  ended  informing  one  more 
sect.  History  seems  to  show  that  progress  to  catholic 
unity  cannot  be  made  by  breaking  away  from  one's 
own  spiritual  inheritance.  And  the  same  conclusion 
would  follow  from  viewing  Christianity  as  the  religion 
of  loyalty  :  loyalty  will  not  grow  out  of  disloyalty. 

The  desire  and  hope  for  Christian  Re-union  grows 
from  year  to  year,  and  as  all  roads  seem  blocked  at 
home,  it  has  become  a  commonplace  in  discussions 
of  the  subject  to  suggest  that  the  desired  lead  will 

1  The  Great  Commission  :  Addresses  on  the  Ordinal.  By  J. 
R.  Woodford,  Bishop  of  Ely  (Rivingtons,  1886). 

2  Gal.  ii.  4  and  v.  i. 


70  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

come  from  the  Mission  Field.  Unfortunately  this 
pious  hope  has  hardly  yet  led  to  corresponding  action 
by  the  home  authorities  ;  for  it  is  a  too  famihar  fact 
on  the  mission  field  that  the  missions  are  not  free  to 
move  in  the  direction  suggested,  but  are  more  or  less 
rigidly  controlled  by  the  home  boards.  Our  AngHcan 
missions  in  particular  are  restrained  by  the  duty  of 
loyalty  to  the  whole  Anglican  Communion,  which 
allows  no  local  section  to  advance  independently 
towards  fellowship  with  other  kinds  of  Christians.  ^ 

To  expedite  human  action  along  the  lines  of  God's 
working,  we  need  knowledge  of  the  actual  facts,  and 
not  only  knowledge  but  such  acknowledgment  of  them 
that  they  become  formative  of  our  thoughts  and 
determinative  of  our  acts.  By  recognition  of  facts  we 
escape  from  the  bondage  and  powerlessness  of  our 
own  preconceptions.  It  is  thus  that  modern  science, 
and  still  more  the  modern  scientific  habit  of  mind, 
is  the  great  means  of  progress  in  every  department  of 
life. 

^  Yet  on  the  mission  field  it  seems  strange  to  read  such  a 
pronouncement  as  the  following,  quoted  in  a  Church  paper 
under  the  heading  "  An  S.P.G.  Boycott,"  made  by  a  London 
vicar  : — 

"  I  have  postponed  making  a  statement  as  to  the  practical 
bearing  of  the  '  Kikuyu  '  pronouncement  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  on  our  collections  for  foreign  Missions,  in  the 
hope  that  the  S.P.G.  might  be  able  to  give  assurances  that 
its  funds  would  not  be  distributed  to  Dioceses  where  separatists 
are  being  admitted  to  our  pulpits  and  Altars  in  defiance  of  the 
doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Church  of  England.  So  far  the 
Society  has  declined  to  give  assurances.  It  asks  us  to  tell 
our  friends  that  it  sympathizes  with  their  anxieties  and  begs 
us  to  be  content  with  the  expression  of  this  friendly  sentiment. 
But  we  are  not  content.  Until  S.P.G.  is  able  to  make  its 
position  quite  clear  we  shall  suspend  our  annual  collection 
for  its  funds,  and  there  will  be  no  Association  in  support  of 
S.P.G.  connected  with  All  Saints." 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE    71 

Many  of  us  who  have  had  some  training  in  science 
or  philosophy  before  taking  up  theology  have  been 
troubled  by  the  reahzation  that  the  latter  has  not 
hitherto  fully  shared  in  that  liberation  of  human 
thought  from  its  own  entanglements  which  has  led 
to  all  the  advancement  of  learning  in  other  depart- 
ments since  the  time  of  Bacon's  Novum  Organum. 
Archbishop  Temple,  in  1857,  wrote  :  "  Our  theology 
has  been  cast  in  a  scholastic  mould,  i.e.,  all  based  on 
logic.  We  are  in  need  of  and  are  gradually  being 
forced  into  a  theology  based  on  psychology.  The 
transition,  I  fear,  will  not  be  without  much  pain  ;  but 
nothing  can  prevent  it."  ^ 

"  O  my  God,  I  am  thinking  Thy  thoughts  after 
Thee,"  said  Kepler,  as  he  traced  the  wonders  of  God's 
working  in  the  stars.  Surely  not  less  should  this  be 
our  acknowledgment  as  we  trace  His  working  in  the 
minds  of  His  children.  But  unfortunatel}^  the  self- 
centredness  incidental  to  most  rehgion  other  than 
that  of  the  living  present  Christ  has  till  now  hindered 
an  unprejudiced  study  of  religious  facts,  even  by  Chris- 
tians. Unless  we  each  of  us  hold  to  faith  in  Christ 
present  we  relapse  into  the  exclusiveness  of  Judaism, 
hugging  our  hnks  with  the  past  that  mark  us  off  from 
other  men.  We  remain  busy  with  the  tombs  of  the 
prophets.  We  study  and' we  teach  what  Christ  was 
and  did  for  our  predecessors,  rather  than  what  He  is 
and  does  for  our  contemporaries.  We  hold  to  what 
He  said  then,  and  hardly  expect  to  hear  Him  say 
anything  fresh  to-day.  The  Word  of  God  that  the 
prophets  heard  we  read  in  books.     The  very  phrase 


^  Memoirs  ii.,  p.  517.     Quoted  by  his  son  in  Foundations, 
p.  226,  and  also  by  Bishop  Brent  in  Leadership,  p.  257. 


72  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

"  the  Word  of  God,"  becomes  technicalized  and  limited 
to  the  record  of  His  words  to  the  Jews.  In  our  Chinese 
translation  of  the  Prayer  Book,  for  example,  the  prayer 
that  Christians  "  may  agree  in  the  truth  of  Thy  holy 
Word,"  which  at  least  is  capable  of  a  wider  meaning, 
becomes  a  prayer  that  they  may  acknowledge  the 
truth  of  the  Bible.  Thus  miracles  and  prophecy  and 
gifts  of  heahng  and  other  gifts  of  the  Spirit  we  are 
disposed  to  relegate  to  the  distant  past :  we  know 
little  or  nothing  of  such  wonders  now.  For  we  know 
so  Httle  about  the  presence  of  Christ  in  the  "  beloved 
community."  Bishop  Walpole,  in  Lije's  Chance, 
remarks  that  in  these  modern  days  of  advancing 
science  "  the  knowledge  of  love  has  not  kept  pace  with 
the  knowledge  of  the  world."  Similarly  Bishop 
Brent :  "  Human  greatness  only  begins  to  express 
itself  in  that  creative  power  which,  in  recent  years, 
has  rejoiced  inordinately  in  its  ability  to  invent  or  to 
organize  matter.  There  is  another  sphere,  as  yet  but 
slightly  exploited,  where  work,  equally  creative 
though  of  a  much  more  enduring  character,  is  waiting 
for  human  operations — the  sphere  to  which  St.  Paul 
refers  when  he  says,  '  We  look  not  at  the  things  which 
are  seen,  but  at  the  things  which  are  not  seen.'  We 
shall  never  be  able  to  vision  more  than  a  fraction  of 
what  we  may  know  and  be,  until  we  Christians  learn 
as  a  body  to  practise  eternity  unremittingly  and 
arduously."  ^  "  The  Christian  experience  of  to-day, 
if  there  be  any  truth  in  the  indwelling  of  God's  Spirit, 
is  as  worthy  of  respect  in  its  bearing  on  theology  as 
that  of  the  first  centuries.  Early  Christian  theology 
was  of  necessity  mainly  psychological,  with  a  moderate 
though  sufficient  regard  for  historicity  as  summed 
1  Presence.     Bishop  Brent,  Longmans,  191 4.     P.  51. 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE    73 

up  in  the  Hebraic  past  and  for  the  essence  of  logic  as 
embodied  in  current  philosophies."  ^ 

The  unreadiness  of  theology  to  accept  the  data  of 
the  present  is  bound  up  with  ignorance  of  the  facts  of 
love.  We  do  not  know  what  love  is  doing  in  the  world 
to-day ;  at  least  we  know  very  little  about  it ;  the 
Church  does  not  concentrate  upon  this  topic  ;  theo- 
logians do  not  make  this  their  science.  The  facts  of 
religious  psychology,  of  the  actual  operations  of  the 
Spirit  of  God  in  the  mind  of  man,  are  an  almost  unex- 
plored field  for  most  of  us,  at  least  in  the  sphere  of 
Church  polity. 

It  is  true  that  of  recent  years  there  has  been  a  be- 
ginning made  in  the  scientific  exploration  and  classifi- 
cation of  the  facts  of  rehgious  experience.  James's 
Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  stands  out  here. 
But  it  is  noteworthy  that  his  study  was  of  abnormal 
types,  and  not  of  the  everyday  facts  of  the  Christian 
life.  A  good  deal  of  work  in  this  direction  has  since 
been  done  ;  "  psychology  "  becomes  almost  a  shib- 
boleth in  writings  on  religious  instruction.  But  the 
Church  as  a  body,  as  an  organized  whole,  is  still  un- 
moved. Her  system  and  methods  are  not  yet  revised 
in  accordance  with  our  growing  knowledge  of  the  facts 
of  love.^ 

1  Leadership.    Bishop  Brent.     P.  258. 

2  In  this  connection  it  seems  worth  noting  that  no  adequate 
work  seems  yet  to  have  been  done  in  the  field  of  social  psy- 
chology, properly  so  called  ;  i.e.,  in  the  study  of  the  facts  of 
corporate  life.  Some  of  us  at  least  have  for  years  been  looking 
in  vain  for  such  books.  The  writings  of  Le  Bon  on  "  the 
Crowd ' '  are  too  superficial  to  satisfy  any  who  see  in  human 
society  more  than  a  crowd  of  individuals.  McDougall's  Social 
Psychology,  in  spite  of  its  title,  is  still  a  study  of  individual 
life,  in  its  social  bearing  indeed,  but  not  of  the  corporate  life 
of  society.     The  Church  still  holds  the  secret  of  corporate 


74  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

Let  us  indeed  recognize  that  a  science  of  psychology 
in  any  complete  sense  may  be  an  impossibility.  Modern 
philosophy  and  science  will  both  lend  support  to  the 
protest  of  religion  against  reducing  the  facts  of  life 
to  the  action  of  predetermined  law.  We  are  not  mere 
examples  of  general  principles.  Individual  initiative  is 
conceded  to  beings  much  lower  than  man.  "  No 
mathematics  could  calculate  the  orbit  of  a  common 
house-fly,"  says  Sir  Oliver  Lodge. ^ 

Nevertheless  these  are  facts  of  life,  and  it  is  possible 
to  review  them  impartially  and  arrange  them  systema- 
tically. This  has  been  the  proper  work  of  the  Church 
from  the  first.  .  The  law  of  forgiveness  as  declared  in 
the  words  of  absolution  is  a  case  in  point  :  "  He  pardon- 
eth  and  absolveth  all  them  that  truly  repent  and  un~ 
feignedly  believe."  There  is  therefore  a  fair  field  for 
religious  psychology :  a  field  in  which  the  Fathers 
worked  :    a  field  now  white  unto  harvest. 

And  there  is  a  worker  in  this  field,  Baron  von  Hiigel, 
whose  work  is  of  inestimable  value  for  the  solution 
of  the  present  difficulty  about  the  re-union  of  Christen- 
dom :  the  difiiculty  of  combining  loyalty  to  the  past 
with  freedom  in  the  present.  In  his  monumental 
work  on  the  Mystical  Element  in  Religion  he  has  helped 
us  to  gQ,t  deeper  into  the  problem  than  most  of  us 
could  get  without  him.  He  shows  how  religion  essen- 
tially consists  in  three  elements  :  the  institutional,  the 
rational  and  the  mystical,  corresponding  broadly  to 
the  predominant  instincts  and  interests  of  the  three 
stages  of  human  life,  childhood,  youth  and  manhood. 

life  :   to  her  failure  to  divulge  it  is  due  this  blank  in  our  modern 
outlook. 

1  In  Presidential  Address  to  the  British  Association,  191 3. 
Quoted  in  God  and  the  World,  by  Dr.  A.  W.  Robinson. 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE    75 

He  speaks  of  "  Sense  and  Memory,  the  Child's  means 
of  approaching  Rehgion  "  ;  "  Question  and  Argument, 
the  Youth's  mode  of  approaching  Rehgion  "  ;  and 
"  Intuition,  Feehng  and  Vohtional  requirements  and 
evidences,  the  Mature  Man's  special  approaches  to 
Faith."  1 

Every  one  in  childhood  accepts  the  facts  of  his  own 
environment  and  of  his  own  teachers  as  the  facts.  Not 
only  his  words,  but  his  thoughts  and  his  views,  are  for 
the  most  part  taken  over  wholesale  from  them  into 
his  own  inner  hfe.  He  is  interested  in  all  the  external 
organization  and  manners  of  his  home,  his  school,  his 
church  ;  these  are  the  facts  that  hold  him.  Only 
later  comes  the  stage  of  questioning — not  the  child's 
superficial  "why,"  but  the  youth's  probing  "why." 
Then  things  have  to  justify  themselves  to  his  reason  ; 
he  must  trace  their  causes  and  connections.  This 
stage  also  passes  for  most  of  us  in  adult  Hfe  ;  we  pass 
from  argument  to  action  ;  we  settle  into  the  proved 
verdicts  of  experience  :  we  are  concerned  with  effect- 
ing results  rather  than  with  investigating  causes. 
Life  now  contains  many  things  that  cannot  be  reduced 
to  formulas. 

Though  the  stages  are  distinguished,  yet  the  three 
elements  successively  predominant  are  concurrent 
throughout  life.  Though  one  comes  to  the  top,  the 
others  are  below.  Together  they  constitute  our 
spiritual  life.  Von  Hiigel  shows  how  these  three 
elements  go  to  make  up  all  our  mental  activity.  "  At 
the  very  source  of  all  our  certainty,  of  the  worth  attri- 
butable to  the  least  or  greatest  of  our  thoughts  and 

1  In  The  Threefold  Strand  of  Belief  (Modern  Oxford  Tracts  : 
Longmans,  6d.  net).  Dr.  H.  Scott  Holland  gives  a  clear  view 
of  these  three  elements  of  religion  as  analysed  by  Von  Hiigel. 


76  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

feelings  and  acts,  we  already  find  the  three  elements  : 
indubitable  sensation,  clear  thought,  warm  faith  in 
and  through  action." 

The  value  of  this  kind  of  scientific  analysis  of  re- 
ligion is  that  it  enables  us  to  deal  with  facts  instead  of 
prejudices.  The  fact  of  supreme  importance  for  our 
present  discussion  is  that  the  denominational  inherit- 
ance in  which  we  have  been  brought  up  is  our  inalien- 
able and  ineradicable  possession.  We  are  likely  to 
find  ourselves  fighting  against  God  if  we  try  to  break 
away  from  it.  We  look  down  on  God  if  we  look  down 
on  others  because  their  inheritance  is  different  from 
our  own.  Von  Hugel  says  :  "  This  traditional  element 
not  all  the  religious  genius  in  the  world  can  ever  escape 
or  replace  :  it  was  there,  surrounding  and  moulding 
the  very  pre-natal  existence  of  each  one  of  us  ;  it  will 
be  there  long  after  we  have  left  the  scene.  We  live 
and  die  its  wise  servants  and  stewards,  or  its  blind 
slaves,  or  in  futile,  impoverishing  revolt  against  it : 
we  never,  for  good  or  for  evil,  really  get  beyond  its 
reach."  ^ 

God  would  have  each  of  us  true  to  his  own  past, 
loyal  to  the  community  that  has  brought  him  up. 

Modern  science  has  thus  brought  us  face  to  face 
with  the  same  facts  on  a  large  scale  that  the  early 
Church  faced  and  obeyed  on  a  small  scale.  "  If  God 
has  given  them  exactly  the  same  gift  as  He  gave  us 
when  we  believed  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  was 
I — how  could  I  try — to  thwart  God  ?  "  The 
Church  then  learned  that  fellowship  was  not  to  be 
limited  to  the  holders  of  special  Divinely-given  privi- 
leges from  the  past.  The  present  working  of  Christ 
then    outweighed   all   tradition.     To-day   we   are   in 

^  Op.  cit.,     vol.  i.,  p.  59. 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE    77 

face  of  religious  facts  vaster  than  any  that  they  could 
know.  Can  we  equally  obey  ?  Can  we  similarly 
allow  facts  to  transcend  tradition  ? 

Let  us  try  to  make  this  point  a  Httle  clearer  :  for 
there  is  an  apparent  contradiction.  On  the  one  hand 
we  say  that  the  traditional  element  of  religion  is 
ineradicable,  an  essential  part  of  each  man's  spiritual 
life.  On  the  other  hand  we  say  that  traditions  must 
give  way  to  present  facts.  The  point  lies  in  the  dis- 
tinction between  God's  tradition  and  man's  tradition  ; 
between  what  God  hands  on  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion in  fact  and  life,  and  what  man  hands  on  in  word 
and  theory.  The  latter  divides  men  into  disputatious 
sects  ;  the  former  unites  men  in  reverence  for  the  Father 
of  all.  For  God's  traditions  are  the  facts  of  human  hfe, 
or  rather  of  the  Divine  life  in  men,  the  facts  of  the  one 
Spirit  "  dividing  to  each  man  severally  as  He  will." 

We  are  faced  with  facts  :  as  Christians  we  should 
rather  say  that  we  are  faced  with  God.  The  denomi- 
national grounding  is  an  essential  factor  of  each  man's 
religion,  not  because  this  may  be  proved  from  the 
Bible,  nor  because  Church  fathers  and  formularies  have 
so  declared,  but  because  the  living  God  does  in  fact  so 
work  in  the  hves  and  minds  of  His  children.  Mutual 
recognition  thus  becomes  not  an  aloof  toleration,  but 
a  humble  and  whole-hearted  acknowledgment  of  God. 

0  come,  let  us  worship  and  fall  down, 
And  kneel  before  the  Lord  our  Maker. 

1  will  give  thanks  unto  Thee,  for  I  am  fearfully  and  wonder- 

fully made. 

The  works  of  the  Lord  are  great,  sought  out  of  all  them  that 
have  pleasure  therein. 

Mutual  recognition  :  the  healing  of  the  wounds  of  the 
Church  :    communion  :    the  return  of  the  Church  to 


78  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

the  feet  of  God  :  the  return  of  the  Bride  to  Christ : 
with  men  it  is  all  impossible,  but  not  with  God.  Faith- 
ful is  He  that  called  us,  who  also  will  do  it — if  we  but 
yield  ourselves  to  Him. 

Already  many  who  believe  in  God  are  giving  them- 
selves to  the  accomplishment  of  this  end.  The  pre- 
parations for  the  World  Conference  on  Faith  and  Order 
have  been  proceeding  steadily  since  1910.  "  It  is 
desired  to  invite  every  autonomous  Communion  which 
confesses  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  God  and  Saviour  to 
appoint  a  Commission  to  co-operate  in  arranging  for 
and  conducting  the  World  Conference.  Fifty-five 
Commissions  have  now  been  appointed,  representing 
almost  every  part  of  the  world,  and  numerous  invita- 
tions are  pending.  Notable  letters  have  been  received 
from  Cardinal  Gasparri  expressing  the  deep  interest  of 
the  Pope  and  himself  in  the  movement  and  promising 
their  prayers.  Two  of  the  leading  magazines  of  the 
Russian  Church  have  published  articles  by  eminent 
theologians  urging  the  co-operation  of  the  Russian 
Church.  Similar  articles  had  been  published,  before 
the  war  by  Protestant  reviews  in  Germany,  Finland, 
Hungary,  Norway  and  Sweden.  .  .  .  The  letters 
received  both  before  and  since  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  show  a  wide  and  increasing  interest  in  the  move- 
ment and  a  clearer  recognition  that  nothing  but  the 
visible  unity  of  the  Church  which  is  the  Body  of  Christ 
will  suihce  to  establish  His  law  of  peace  "  (Leaflet 
issued  October,  1915). 

The  existence  since  1913  of  the  Constnictive  Quarterly, 
a  Journal  of  the  Faith,  Work  and  Thought  of  Christen- 
dom, is  another  sign  of  the  times.  Here  leading 
thinkers  of  every  Church  give  of  their  best  in  con- 
structive statement  of  the  convictions  and  experience 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE    79 

of  their  own  communion.  "  The  immediate  purpose 
of  the  Quarterly  is  to  induce  a  better  understanding 
and  a  truer  sense  of  fellowship.  Its  final  hope  is  the 
unity  of  the  Family  of  God  in  the  Body  of  Christ,  where 
the  liberty  of  the  children  of  God  will  be  attained." 

A  French  Roman  Catholic  writer  in  this  Quarterly  ^ 
reviews  a  recent  work  of  Pere  Bainvel,  a  professor  in 
the  Catholic  Institute  of  Paris,  on  Outside  the  Church 
no  Salvation,  which,  he  declares,  exactly  reflects  the 
common  teaching.  All  through,  in  fact,  the  distin- 
guished professor  incessantly  leans  upon  declarations 
of  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  and  the  best  theologians. 
The  view  of  this  representative  Roman  Catholic 
theologian  is  as  follows :  "  While  men  necessarily 
halt  at  the  exterior  of  things,  and  can  judge  only 
after  appearances,  the  divine  sight  sees  what  is  :  it 
sees  hearts,  it  sees  souls.  .  .  .  For  God,  souls  are 
what  they  are  within,  v/hat  they  are  by  intimate  dis- 
position and  by  will.  The  outward  act  itself,  while 
counting  for  much  in  His  eyes,  nevertheless  counts 
only  through  the  will  and  intention  which  animate  it 
through  whatever  of  heart  and  of  soul  is  found  in  it. 
We  understand  then  that  to  belong  or  not  belong,  by 
visible  ties,  by  external  communion  to  the  Church  of 
Christ  is  for  Him  a  secondary  matter,  if  we  may  so 
express  it.  The  distinction  of  visible  and  invisible  is 
valid  only  in  relation  to  us  ;  to  Him,  all  is  visible." 
The  reviewer  continues  :  "  And  this  is  why,  in  His 
eyes,  they  are  already  in  the  true  Church  of  Christ, 
all  those  souls  unknown  to  us  whom  circumstances 
stronger  than  their  will  keep_f ar  away  from  the  ecclesi- 
astical body,  but  who  in  reahty  are  joined  to  it  by  the 

1  Jean  Riviere,  Professor  in  the  Grand  Seminaire,  Albi : 
Constructive  Quarterly,  September,   191 4. 


8o  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

imperceptible  bonds  of  the  heart.  Thus  may  we, 
with  our  Fathers  in  the  Faith,  repeat  the  ancient 
formula:  'Outside  the  Church  no  salvation.'  For 
we  know  that  beyond  the  narrow  boundaries  of  the 
society  which  in  this  world  holds  Christ's  faithful  in 
one  group,  there  stretches  the  vaster  and  fairer  Church 
of  souls.  The  contemplation  of  this  unity,  which  is 
withheld  from  our  mortal  view,  will  no  doubt  be  one  of 
the  joys  of  the  heavenly  Fatherland.  Meanwhile  we 
can  only  hasten  by  our  prayers  and  our  exertions  the 
day  when  that  '  building  of  Christ's  Body  '  shall  be 
accomplished  in  which  we  shall  all  meet  each  other 
again  '  in  one  and  the  same  faith  and  in  the  knowledge 
of  the  Son  of  God,'  where  '  there  shall  be  but  one  flock 
and  one  Shepherd.'  " 

"  Underlying  all  our  disunions,"  writes  a  Congre- 
gational Professor  of  Theology,^  "  there  is  not  only  a 
common  Christian  experience  which  is  basal  and 
binding,  but  also  a  body  of  common  conviction,  a 
vital  doctrinal  consensus  far  richer  than  has  ever  been 
recognized.  The  Church  at  large  has  been  bhnd  to  its 
own  unity.  We  have  not  seen  the  forest  because  of 
the  trees,  and  the  groves.  The  Church  has  failed  to 
realize  that  underneath  all  its  doctrinal  outgrowths, 
feeding  the  roots  even  of  its  tangles  and  underbrush, 
is  the  inexhaustible  soil  of  a  common  vital  spiritual 
experience,  out  of  which  have  grown  certain  great 
essential  convictions  which,  the  more  firmly  and  vitally 
they  are  reaHzed,  the  more  surely  will  they  draw  us 
toward  one  another." 

Mutual  recognition  is  the  keynote  of  all  this  new 

1  John  Wright  Buckham,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Christian 
Theology  in  the  Pacific  Theological  Seminary.  Constructive 
Quarterly,  December,   191 5,  p.  824. 


VALIDITY  OF  SECTIONAL  EXPERIENCE  8i 

movement  in  the  Churches,  a  movement  which  is 
thus  seen  to  be  vitally  connected  with  the  whole 
course  of  progress  of  modern  thought  and  life,  in 
that  it  takes  facts  as  facts  and  honours  them  as  such. 
The  Student  Christian  Movement  is  probably  the  most 
notable  and  potent  embodiment  of  the  ideal.  The 
ideal  of  a  dead  uniformity  is  in  itself  nearly  dead.  The 
ideal  of  unity  in  diversity  is  what  we  are  all  after  : 
only  we  still  fail  to  arrive. 

The  present  position  of  Christendom  would  be 
ridiculous  if  it  were  not  so  tragic.  We  have  ceased  to 
persecute  one  another.  We  read  each  other's  books, 
and  draw  mental  and  spiritual  Hght  and  strength 
from  teachers  of  other  denominations.  We  even 
actively  co-operate  in  some  few  moral  and  social 
enterprises.  In  short,  we  know  that  we  are  fellow- 
Christians. 

But  the  official  Church — the  Church  as  organized — 
cannot  move  :  she  is  paralysed.  In  every  proposal 
for  conference  or  joint  action  there  is  the  proviso  that 
of  course  the  several  Churches  are  not  committed  to 
anything  that  may  be  done  or  decided.  We  unite  in 
everything  except  the  distinctive  practices  of  our 
rehgion.  Our  Church  systems  make  it  seem  that  the 
nearer  we  get  to  Christ  the  further  we  get  from  one 
another.     Which  is  absurd. 

The  children  are  come  to  the  birth  and  there  is  not 
strength  to  bring  them  forth. 

"  Weep,  dear  Lord,  above  Thy  bride  low-lying  ; 
Thy  tears  shall  wake  her  frozen  limbs  to  life  and  health 
again." 

In  spite  of  all  we  know,  the  official  Church  remains 
powerless  to  move — until  she  comes  under  the  direct 
control  of  Christ. 


CHAPTER   VII 
THE  WAY 

'  T   AM  the  Way/' 

-L  We  know  Him  as  the  Way  for  ourselves  as 
individuals.  But  we  have  not  yet  recognized  Him  as 
the  Way  for  human  society.  Human  society  has  lost 
its  way  ;  we  do  not  know  where  we  are  going.  Society 
has  been  compared  to  a  rider  on  a  runaway  horse, 
named  Civilization ;  we  are  all  inordinately  proud 
of  the  strength  of  our  steed,  and  of  his  ever-increasing 
speed.  But  what  is  the  good  of  speed  if  it  has  no 
goal,  and  if  all  peace  is  lost  in  the  progress  ? 

But  the  "Hound  of  Heaven  "  pursues  mankind  no 
less  than  He  pursues  the  individual : 

Nigh  and  nigh  draws  the  chase, 

With  unperturbed  pace, 

Dehberate  speed,  majestic  instancy. 

And  past  those  noised  Feet 

A  Voice  comes  yet  more  fleet — 

"  Lo  !  naught  contents  thee,  who  content 'st  not  Me." 

And  so  at  last  we  begin  to  understand  that  our 
trouble  is  God's  trouble,  and  our  pain  His.  May  we 
stop  and  think. 

The  root  of  the  trouble  is  that  the  Church  herself  has 
lost  the  way,  and  therefore  cannot  lead  mankind. 
Even  at  the  oncoming  of  war  she  was  speechless,  she 
who  is  or  was  the  Body  of  the  Prince  of  Peace. 

82 


THE  WAY  83 

Christ  is  the  Way  :  only  He  can  bring  us  to  God  ; 
only  He  can  bring  Christendom  into  Hne  with  God. 
And  He  can  do  so  only  as  Christendom  recognizes 
Him  and  yields  to  Him  :  recognizes  Him  in  God  ;  in 
every  one  as  that  which  links  or  would  link  us  together, 
taking  us  out  of  the  little  self  into  the  larger  self. 

The  Church  has  lost  the  way  because  she  has  for- 
gotten how  to  grow  up.  For  the  way  is  the  Way  of 
Life  ;  and  hfe  involves  growth.  At  the  beginning  she 
attained  to  a  complete  hfe,  the  records  of  which  must 
remain  a  pattern  and  inspiration  for  us  in  our  feeble 
second  childhood  of  religion.  She  started  growing  up 
in  all  things  unto  Him,  which  is  the  Head,  even  Christ. 
But  now  her  tragedy  is  arrested  growth  :  she  has 
stuck  :  she  cannot  get  there.  The  world  looks  wonder- 
ingly  at  her  vast  powers,  cabined  and  confined. 

Now  this  arrest  of  growth  in  religion  is  a  pheno- 
menon whose  causes  and  effects  have  become  fairly 
obvious.  What  has  happened  ?  The  Church  began 
with  Christ.  Men  found  in  Him  the  fulfilment  of  past 
ideals,  the  attainment  of  present  reality,  the  assurance 
of  a  complete  future.  But  the  Present  was  the  dominant 
factor  in  their  consciousness — the  present  Christ,  Who 
never  failed  them.  This  is  the  essential  mystical 
element  of  adult  rehgion.  So  long  as  the  Church 
retained  the  sense  of  Christ's  presence  and  remained 
under  His  direct  control,  she  knit  in  one  rich  life  all 
those  elements  of  religion  which  at  other  times  have 
been  sundered — the  corporate  loyalty,  the  intellectual 
vigour,  the  devotion  of  personal  faith.  Later,  the 
Past  eclipsed  the  Present.  Christians  ceased  to 
cohere  in  Christ.  Institutionalism  prevailed,  with 
rationalism  ranged  against  it  as  hereditary  foe. 

This  eclipse  of  the  present  is  what  always  happens 


84  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

if  we  lose  or  think  we  have  lost  our  leader  or  lover. 
In  the  present  blank  we  treasure  the  old  words  and 
chng  to  the  old  ways  of  doing  things  ;  the  past  is 
sacred  ;   innovation  is  apt  to  look  like  sacrilege. 

Christ  founded  the  Church  to  save  us  from  this 
pathetic  malady.  For  understanding  of  this  malady, 
this  arrest  of  growth,  we  again  draw  help  from  Von 
Hiigel's  analysis  of  religion  into  the  three  elements : 
institutional,  rational,  mystical.  The  corporate 
Church  no  less  than  the  individual  Christian  needs  the 
co-ordination  of  all  three  religious  forces.  In  Church 
history,  as  in  individual  life,  the  three  elements  of 
religion  are  present  throughout ;  but  only  in  the  full- 
grown  life  are  they  properly  co-ordinated.  Except 
in  the  golden  Apostolic  Age  we  are  apt  to  find  each  of 
them  dominant  at  different  stages  of  Church  history : 
religion  becomes  one-sided,  either  as  traditional,  or  as 
rationalist,  or  as  subjective.  The  primary  stage, 
corresponding  to  childhood  of  the  individual,  is  that 
in  which  the  Christian  community  goes  on  happily  in 
entire  satisfaction  with  its  own  ideas  and  its  own 
methods  and  its  own  plans.  It  is  intensely  conserva- 
tive, attaching  Divine  sanction  to  all  it  has  inherited 
from  the  past.  This  is  the  stage  of  keen  denominational 
life,  in  which  the  interests  of  the  denomination  are 
supreme,  and  its  ordinances  are  regarded  as  of  uni- 
versal obhgation.  Throughout  Christendom  we  are 
all  famihar  with  these  phenomena,  and  with  this 
experience  ;  with  making  such  claim  ourselves,  and 
resenting  it  when  made  by  others.  This  institutional 
element  of  religion  is  more  particularly  characteristic 
of  Church  officials  and  Church  councils.  We  are 
aware  of  its  action  in  ourselves  in  those  capacities  : 
there  too  often  we  are  other  men  than  when  we  kneel 


THE  WAY  85 

alone  with  God,  other  men  than  we  are  in  ordinary 
intercourse  with  our  friends.  It  causes  the  character- 
istic weakness  of  episcopacy,  which  but  for  this  lop- 
sidedness  might  well  be  recognized  by  all  as  part  of 
the  Divine  plan  for  Church  order.  A  religion  that 
makes  a  particular  tradition  determinative  of  its 
action  prejudices  to  the  modern  mind  its  claim  to 
Divine  sanction.  For  to  modern  men  as  to  the  first 
Christians  what  is  primary  in  religion  is  not  the  Then 
and  There  but  the  Now  and  Here  of  God's  relation 
to  men. 

The  secondary  stage  of  Church  life  is  that  of  intel- 
lectual and  critical  activity.  This  too  is  conspicuous 
in  these  days.  ^  It  is  essentially  individualist — each 
man  following  the  truth  whithersoever  it  seems  to 
lead  him  :  yet  it  becomes  characteristic  of  a  society 
of  individualists  (for  they  cannot  be  purely  indivi- 
dualist). So  we  have  that  mass  of  theological  criticism 
and  speculation  which  owns  no  allegiance  to  the  organ- 
ized Christian  community  and  cuts  itself  off  from  the 
traditions  and  authority  of  past  thought.  The  Church 
thus  seems  for  some  time  past  to  have  been  held  up 
at  the  crisis  which  Von  Hiigel  well  describes  as  it 
occurs  in  the  individual  life  :  "  The  transition  from  the 
child's  rehgion,  so  simply  naive  and  unconscious,  so 
tied  to  time  and  place  and  particular  persons  and 
things,  so  predominantly  traditional  and  historical, 
institutional  and  external,  to  the  right  and  normal 
type  of  a  young  man's  religion,  is  as  necessary  as  it  is 
perilous.  The  transition  is  necessary.  For  all  the 
rest  of  him  is  growing — body  and  soul  are  growing  in 
clamorous  complexity  in  every  direction  :    how  then 

^  Cf.  above,  chap.  IV. 


86  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

can  the  deepest  part  of  his  nature,  his  religion,  not 
require  to  grow  and  develop  also  ?  "  (Von  Hiigel  asks 
this  question  as  to  the  individual  youth  :  we  can  ask  it 
likewise  as  regards  Christian  society),  "  and  how  can 
it  permeate  and  purify  all  the  rest,  how  can  it  remain 
and  increasingly  become  '  the  secret  source  of  all  his 
seeing, '  of  his  productiveness  and  courage  and  unifica- 
tion, unless  it  continually  equals  and  exceeds  all  other 
interests  within  the  living  man  "  (or  society)  "  by  its 
own  persistent  vitality,  its  rich  and  infinite  variety, 
its  subtle,  ever-fresh  attraction  and  inexhaustible 
resourcefulness  and  power  ?  But  the  crisis  is  peri- 
lous. For  he  will  be  greatly  tempted  either  to  cHng 
exclusively  to  his  existing,  all  but  simply  institu- 
tional, external  position,  and  to  fight  and  elude  all 
approaches  to  its  reasoned,  intellectual  apprehension 
and  systematization  ;  and  in  this  case  his  religion 
will  tend  to  contract  and  shrivel  up,  and  to  become  a 
something  simply  alongside  of  other  things  in  his  life. 
Or  he  will  feel  strongly  pressed  to  let  the  individual 
intellect  simply  supplant  the  institutional,  in  which 
case  his  religion  will  grow  hard  and  shallow,  and  will 
tend  to  disappear  altogether."  ^ 

Look  at  Christendom  to-day.  Is  not  its  condition 
correctly  diagnosed  in  the  passage  thus  quoted  ?  Has 
not  religion  become  "  a  something  simply  alongside 
of  other  things  in  our  life  "  ?  Or  over  large  tracts  of 
"  enlightened  "  society  does  it  not  "  tend  to  disappear 
altogether  "  ?  It  v/as  an  immature  Church  that  had  to 
face  the  oncoming  of  war  :  as  a  wondering  child,  or 
an  argumentative  youth,  not  the  man  full-grown  in 
the  stature  of  Christ. 

1  Vol.  i.,  pp.  5-1,  55. 


THE  WAY  87 

Christendom  indeed  is  not  merely  the  scene  of 
conflict  between  institutionalism  and  rationahsm,  or 
of  isolated  development  of  one  or  the  other  of  these 
elements.  It  contains  much  more  than  the  assertive 
simplicity  of  childhood,  or  the  crises  and  conflicts 
and  dogmatism  of  youth  ;  it  contains  the  religion  of 
mature  life.  Everywhere  are  those  who  through  the 
institution  and  through  the  reasoning  have  followed 
on  to  know  the  Lord.  "  Here  religion  is  rather  felt 
than  seen  or  reasoned  about,  is  loved  and  lived  rather 
than  analysed,  is  action  and  power,  rather  than  either 
external  fact  or  intellectual  verification." 

But  it  is  individuals  of  Christendom  that  have 
reached  this  adult  religion,  not  Christendom  as  an 
organized  whole,  not  the  Church  or  Churches  as  such. 
Christendom  is  full  of  grown-up  Christians,  but  itself 
fails  to  grow  up.  This  is  the  deepest  tragedy  of  the 
present  war.  Christian  men  in  all  these  nations 
through  the  very  passion  of  their  loyalty,  through  the 
utterness  of  their  self-surrender,  are  ranged  against 
one  another.  Because  they  are  willing  to  die,  they 
are  obliged  to  kill.  Because  they  are  devoted  to 
truth  and  honour,  they  are  involved  in  breaches  of  the 
fundamental  rules  of  even  schoolboy  honour.  The 
horror  of  it  all  is  voiced  by  writer  after  writer  from 
the  trenches,  wilHng  to  go  on  in  absolute  self-sacrifice, 
but  loathing  the  whole  thing  utterly. 

Here  again  we  are  up  against  the  contrast  between 
personal  religion  and  the  corporate  expression  of  it. 
Christianity  as  the  religion  of  loyalty  produces  loyal 
men  :  but  the  Church  has  not  shown  them  clearly 
what  loyalty  really  is  :  and  therefore  loyalty,  instead 
of  uniting,  divides.  For  in  every  part  of  human  life, 
so  long  as  we  are  content  with  superficial  views,  we 


88  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

find  ourselves  mutually  opposed  ;  when  we  get  to  the 
deep  views,  we  find  ourselves  at  one.  We  attain  to 
unity  in  diversity. 

Loyalty  in  every  land  is  a  spiritual  force  attaching 
itself  to  material  objects.  We  need  but  call  to  mind 
what  the  national  flag  means  to  us.  The  flag  is  a 
focus  of  all  that  attachment  to  the  things  of  home  and 
country.  But  behind  the  things  lies  the  hfe  that  they 
embody  and  express,  it  is  to  that  larger  life  that 
loyalty  devotes  our  individual  lesser  lives.  Many  hold 
that  loyalty  attaches  ultimately  to  the  nation  or  the 
State.  But  we  must  remember  that  it  takes  other 
forms  than  that  of  patriotism.  Before  the  war, 
parties  and  classes  were  taking  the  place  of  the  nation, 
and  men  and  women  were  throwing  themselves  into 
those  narrower  causes  with  hardly  less  devotion  than 
they  now  give  to  the  national  cause.  Many  of  us  will 
remember  our  early  loyalties  to  School  or  House,  and 
our  inabihty  to  feel  that  any  rival  attachment  could 
be  as  good  and  real  as  ours.  Loyalty,  then,  is  an 
ultimate  factor  of  our  spiritual  life — ^spiritual  as  tran- 
scending time  and  space.  It  belongs  to  the  first  of 
those  three  essential  elements  of  religion,  the  institu- 
tional, the  rational  and  the  mystical.  It  binds  us 
corporately  to  our  institutions.  But  we  must  acknow- 
ledge that  though  an  ultimate  factor  of  religion  it 
is  not  ultimate  in  its  ordinary  forms,  as  attached  to 
this  or  that  object,  though  at  the  time  we  think  (or 
rather  feel)  that  it  is.  There  are  many  excellent 
instances  of  party  transference,  of  religious  transfer- 
ence, of  naturalization.  The  man  brought  up  in 
loyalty  to  one  community  Hves  later  as  a  loyal  member 
of  another.  This  is  to  say  that  no  State,  no  party,  no 
Church,   as  standing  in  distinction  or  opposition  to 


THE  WAY  89 

another,  has  the  ultimate  claim  to  man's  allegiance.^ 
Only  Christ  has  that.  Christ  alone  is  the  absolute 
society.  No  other  is  catholic.  The  tragedy  of  Chris- 
tians in  this  war  is  therefore  due  to  the  Church's  over- 
emphasis on  the  institutional  side  of  religion  :  she  has 
given  men  loyalty,  but  has  not  given  them  the  present 
Christ  to  claim  that  loyalty.  The  Church  has  hitherto 
failed  to  present  Christ  as  the  ultimate  Corporate 
Personahty,  to  hold  together  all  His  members  for  ever. 
So  we  come  back  to  the  point  that  corporate  religion 
is  incomplete,  inadequate  to  human  Ufe  and  need,  if 
either  the  institutional  or  the  rational  element  is 
allowed  to  be  domnnant.  Through  the  institution  and 
through  the  reasoning  the  Church  too,  Hke  the  in- 
dividual, must  follow  on  to  know  the  Lord.  She 
cannot  attain  to  full-grown  life  unless  the  mystical 
element  is  dominant :  not  exclusive,  but  inclusive 
of  the  other  two  elements  of  reHgion.  This  does  not 
mean  that  individual  "  mystics  "  must  be  called  upon 
to  govern  :  it  means  that  the  whole  body  must  be 
mystical.  There  is  no  question  here  of  subjective 
mysticism,  "laying  such  an  emphasis  on  the  relation 
of  the  individual  soul  to  God  as  to  obscure  its  relation 
to  men  and  to  nature."  We  are  deahng  with  the 
development  of  corporate  rehgion,  claiming  that  in 
the  Church  the  Presence  of  Christ  must  be  recognized 
and  acknowledged  as  determinative  of  action  and  of 
thought  (not  merely  of  religious  emotion).  The 
present  state  of  Church  life  would  seem  to  imply  that 
He  is  an  absentee,  or  else  lacking  in  wisdom,  or  prac- 
tical abihty,  or  adaptability  to  new  needs  and  great 
crises.  Such  seems  to  be  our  unconscious  assumption 
when  we  allow  either  the  institutional  or  the  rational 
1  So  Edith  Cavell  has  shown  us.   "  Patriotism  is  not  enough." 


90  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

element  of  religion  to  dominate  the  whole  :  as  though 
Christ  were  something  in  the  past,  or  something  to  be 
reasoned  about,  and  not  the  present  Lord  of  all  our 
life. 

For  this  question  of  the  three  elements  of  rehgion  is 
really  the  question  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ.  Mysticism 
is  the  recognition  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  the  acknow- 
ledgment of  His  Presence  as  God  :  for  God  is  He 
Who  cannot  be  absent  unless  I  put  Him  from  me.  The 
institutional  and  the  rational  elements  of  religion 
are  therefore  failures  if  they  are  not  crowned  by  the 
mystical,  for  they  just  stop  short  of  Christ.  Institu- 
tionalism  grounds  us  in  good  habits  ;  rationaHsm  gives 
us  clear  thought  and  intelligent  grasp  of  our  situation  ; 
but  it  is  mysticism  that  launches  us  out  for  service, 
in  all  the  activities  of  Love.  Neither  habits  nor 
thoughts  make  up  a  full  life  ;  Love  alone  does  that. 
Worshippers  of  Christ  are  worshippers  of  Love.  Ser- 
vants of  Christ  are  servants  of  Love.  To  look  back 
on  the  course  of  our  discussion  to  this  point,  we  recall 
Christ's  promise  to  be  with  us  for  ever  ;  we  remember 
the  New  Testament  experience  of  Him,  creating  new 
men  and  building  them  up  into  one  Body  in  Love, 
which  is  Himself ;  for  they  found  Him  by  giving 
themselves  up  to  Love  ;  and  we  realize  that  through 
the  Christian  centuries  the  real  life  of  the  Church  has 
been  the  knowledge  of  Christ  in  God,  which  is  the 
knowledge  of  Love  in  God.  All  this  means  that  Love 
is  alive  and  intelligent  and  capable  :  not  a  mere  emo- 
tion, but  the  Hfe  and  intelligence  and  capacity  of  the 
eternal  God  :  not  my  or  your  caprice,  but  the  rational 
principle  and  constant  power  of  the  universe  :  claim- 
ing our  trust. 

Now  as  being  myself  an  Anglican,  I  feel  called  upon 


THE  WAY  91 

to  realize  that  the  Anghcan  Communion  is  to  a  pecu- 
liar degree  dominated  by  institutionalism,  and  thereby 
restrained  from  the  full  life  of  faith.  ^  In  our  relations 
with  other  Christians  our  constant  claim  is  that  we 
are  in  the  true  Hue  of  succession  from  the  past.  Ours 
is  "  the  ■  historical  faith."  The  "  Lambeth  Quadri- 
lateral," defining  the  points  essential  to  the  Anglican 
Communion  in  any  projects  of  reunion,  is  a  statement 
of  the  great  things  from  the  past  which  we  must  not 
let  go  (Orders,  Sacraments,  Scriptures,  Creeds).  In 
our  practical  ministry  we  are  dominated  by  this  con- 
ception of  a  historic  institution  of  whose  inherited 
treasures  we  are  the  responsible  stewards.  We  are 
apt  to  treat  the  Prayer  Book  as  among  the  ultimate 
data  of  religion.  From  it  we  take  God's  message  for 
the  day ;  on  it  we  base  complete  schemes  of  religious 
instruction.  Cur  controversies  are  not  about^  the 
meaning  and  methods  of  love,  but  about  our  tradi- 
tions of  doctrines  and  ceremonies.  For  the  sake  of 
these  we  lapse  from  love. 

Responsibility  for  the  present  failure  of  Christen- 
dom lies  with  all  of  us  who  hold  executive  or  doctrinal 
authority  in  this  or  other  branches  of  the  Church. 
We  are  responsible  for  the  fact  that  in  actual  practice, 
in  contrast  with  her  ideal  character,  the  Church  so 
largely  reflects  the  minds  of  men  and  not  the  mind 
of  Christ.  Whoever  may  have  been  responsible  in  the 
past,  it  is  we  who  are  responsible  to-day — v/e  who  till 

1 "  Fundamentally  our  religion  consists  in  preserving  a 
tradition,"  writes  Dr.  Headlam,  and  that  in  an  article  admir- 
ably bringing  out  the  need  of  "  a  revived  intellectual  life, 
which  will  mean  the  application  of  thought  to  everything 
instead  of  acquiescence  in  unmeaning  custom  or  bad  tradi- 
tions." Church  Quarterly  Review,  October,  1916  :  "Where 
does  the  Defect  of  the  Church  Lie  ?  " 


92  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

now  have  accepted  the  situation  and  smugly  hved  our 
Hves  and  exercised  our  ministry  within  its  set  con- 
ditions. We  who  stand  professionally  for  the  tradi- 
tional doctrines  and  ceremonies  are  responsible  for 
the  Church's  one-sided  development,  for  her  failure 
to  attain  the  full  stature.  If  Christ  at  the  outset 
willed  us  to  be  perfect,  have  not  we.  His  representa- 
tives, set  at  naught  His  commandment  by  our  tradi- 
tion— that  is,  by  our  over-emphasis  on  the  tradition 
as  tradition,  as  linking  us  to  a  past  rather  than  to 
the  present  ?    Lop-sidedness  is  not  perfection. 

The  unfairness  of  our  ministry  may  in  some  respects 
have  struck  us.  For  why  should  our  professions  and 
employments  be  held  sacred,  and  those  of  laymen  be 
set  down  as  secular  ?  Why  should  we  have  much 
more  constant  access  to  means  of  grace  than  others 
can  have  ?  ^  But  one  particular  unfairness  is  apt 
to  escape  our  attention.  In  the  ministry  of  con- 
version we  call  on  men  and  women  to  break  the  habits 
of  a  hfetime,  and  to  cast  themselves  in  Christ's  inimit- 
able power  to  re-create  them  :  and  we  know  that  they 
and  He  can  do  it.  But  we  do  not  often  think  of 
making  such  a  plunge  ourselves  :  we  do  not  contem- 
plate a  revolution  in  our  own  personal  habits  or  modes 
of  speech  and  thought.  We  have  stamped  these  as 
sacred.  Such  heroism  of  self-surrender  to  the  hving 
Christ,  of  self-committal  to  the  untrod  Way,  we  only 
expect  of  comparative  beginners.  As  for  ourselves, 
we  have  settled  down — settled  to  our  own  concep- 
tions of  religion,  to  our  regular  enjoyment  of  what 
appeals  to  us. 

1  Cf.  Ezekiel  xxxiv.  We  may  disclaim  the  intention  but 
we  can  hardly  deny  the  fact  of  this  broad  distinction  between 
clerical  and  lay  life. 


THE  WAY  93 

Christ  did  not  say  "  Stand  with  Me,"  but  *'  Follow 
Me,"  and  His  call  to  every  generation  is  the  same — 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  for  ever.  He  is  nearer 
to  us,  not  farther,  than  He  was  to  those  fishermen 
in  Galilee  ;  but  we  seem  slower  to  forsake  our  boats 
and  nets  than  they  were.  He  means  us  through  His 
all-embracing,  all-reconcihng  presence  to  do  greater 
works  than  ever  He  did  as  an  individual  there — not 
to  spend  our  time  and  energy  in  arguing  about  those 
less  great  works  of  His,  whether  and  how  they  were 
ever  done. 

We  know  how  to  trust  Him  with  the  part — our  own 
personal  life  :  why  do  we  not  trust  Him  with  the  whole  ? 
If  I  know  Him  adequate  for  myself,  why  do  I  count 
Him  inadequate  for  the  persons  and  causes  for  which 
I  am  responsible  ?  Why  do  we  stake  all  on  the  main- 
tenance of  a  tradition  or  the  victory  of  a  part3L? 

As  the  Church's  commissioned  officials  we  feel 
responsible  for  the  Church's  heritage,  and  are  disposed 
to  take  its  maintenance  into  our  own  hands.  Some 
insist  that  all  must  walk  in  the  old  ways  ;  others  insist 
that  the  memory  of  old  persecutions  must  be  kept 
fresh  :  seemingly  ignorant  of  the  Life  that  is  always 
moving  on,  so  that  no  to-day  is  the  same  as  yesterday, 
save  only  as  linked  up  in  Him  Who  is  the  Life  of  all. 
Our  fatal  vice  is  this  anxiety  about  our  inheritance ; 
in  other  words,  our  want  of  faith.  Our  very  faith- 
fulness is  faithless. 

We  need  not  be  so  anxious  about  our  inheritance, 
and  if  we  need  not,  we  ought  not.  For  we  really  can 
safely  leave  it  to  God,  to  the  nature  with  which  He  has 
endowed  us  all.  We  have  already  seen  that  denomina- 
tional self-assertion  is  uncalled-for,  because  the  de- 
nominational inheritance  is  an  ineradicable  part  of 


94  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

our  spiritual  make-up.  And  we  have  the  present 
facts  of  patriotism  :  in  every  land  we  are  in  the  grip 
of  this  mighty  force  ;  we  need  not  anxiously  grip  it. 
An  illustration  of  these  latent  forces  in  modern  man 
is  presented  by  the  glorious  efficiency  of  British 
soldiers,  men  from  offices  and  factories  and  fields,  who 
were  supposed  to  be  unfitted  for  war  because  never 
trained  to  it,  but  have  been  found  in  a  few  months 
equal  to  the  best.  There  are  mighty  forces  in  us  all 
which  the  Church  has  not  yet  mobilized. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  be  anxious  about  preserving  these 
forces  of  our  human  nature.  But  it  is  for  us  to  under- 
stand and  control  them.  We  can  only  rise  above 
facts,  and  use  them,  by  understanding  them.  Let  us 
therefore  understand  our  own  and  others'  loyalty. 

Understand  it ;  i.e.  understand  Him.  **  /  am  the 
Way.",  That  which  seems  an  impersonal  force,  mov- 
ing us  all  on  resistlessly,  welding  us  together  in  our 
corporate  loyalties,  is  He,  after  all.  To  agree  in 
acknowledging  this  would  be  to  rise  to  adult  religion, 
to  bring  the  Church  into  line  with  God,  into  line  with 
the  experience  of  us  all. 

To  this  end  we  clergy  and  ministers  must  repent  and 
alter.  We  must  truly  lead  the  way.  The  future  is 
in   our  hands. 

We  are  not  asked  to  disown  our  own  convictions  and 
experiences  of  grace  ;  but  mutually  to  own  the  con- 
victions and  experiences  of  others.  For  example,  I 
for  my  part  shall  ever  treasure  as  most  sacred  the 
times  when  I  prepared  boys  for  baptism,  and  the 
Ember-tide  retreats  of  candidates  for  ordination : 
together  with  the  constant  sacramental  grace  which 
I  share  with  all  my  fellow-communicants.  Such 
solemn    times    afforded    by    the    institutions    of    the 


THE  WAY  95 

Church  have  brought  us  right  inside  the  workings  of 
God.  There  can  be  no  disillusionment  about  them. 
But  we  want  to  go  on  to  proclaim  that  there  is  no  place 
for  any  disillusionments  in  Christianity. 

Jesus  lives.     Our  hearts  know  well 
Naught  from  us  His  love  can  sever. 

Really  we  all  have  this  faith,  expressed  in  words  and 
forms  that  we  love,  if  we  will  but  use  it.  ^ 

There  is  no  question  of  giving  up  the  forms  endeared 
to  us  by  long  experience.  Mysticism  does  not  mean 
scrapping  our  institutions.  The  mystical  element 
must  include  those  other  elements  which  we  now  allow 
to  dominate  our  religion  ;  but  it  must  now  dominate 
them.  There  must  of  necessity  be  estabHshed  forms 
and  ceremonies  (a)  for  the  sake  of  children  in  years, 
{b)  for  the  sake  of  children  in  the  faith,  (c)  for  the 
sake  of  us  all :  for  to  the  end  of  our  days  we  all  need 
outward  order  and  system  if  we  are  to  have  stability 
of  inward  life,  and  if  we  are  to  have  social  cohesion  in 
a  common  loyalty,  and  if  we  are  to  build  in  ordered 
progress  on  the  past.  (And  we  have  already  noted 
that  we  cannot  eliminate  this  institutional  element 
even  if  we  would.)  Also  there  will  be  perpetual  need 
for  intellectual  vigour  and  candour,  the  unfettered 
use  of  all  our  mental  powers,  in  the  cause  of  truth  and 
honesty.  But  above  all  and  in  all  and  through  all 
there  must  be  direct  acknowledgment  of  Christ  present 
in  our  God. 

The  doctrine  of  Christ's  Divinity  is  the  pecuUar 
boast  of  Christendom  ;  that  it  applies  to  all  life  is  a 
famihar  truth,  famihar  as  a  theory  or  an  ideal :  it  is 
the  complete  practice  of  it  that  seems  so  hard  to  arrive 

1  Cf.  Swete,  The  Ascended  Christ,  pp.  162,  163. 


96  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

at.  Yet,  maybe,  it  will  not  prove  so  hard  if  we  really 
turn  to  Him  for  that  application  to  all  Hfe.  To  do  so, 
we  must  of  necessity  rise  above  our  old  institutional 
ruts  :  not  necessarily  to  leave  them,  but  at  least  to  see 
that  they  are  ruts,  and  not  the  whole  road.  Institu- 
tionalism  means  being  inside  the  institution  ;  ration- 
ahsm  means  rising  above  it  to  view  it  from  outside 
and  in  relation  to  other  institutions  ;  mysticism  means 
recognizing  God  present  and  working  in  it  and  in  them 
and  in  yourself  who  thus  view  His  processes.  Now 
though  the  institutional  aspect  of  Anghcanism  is  what 
seems  to  loom  largest  before  the  world,  it  is  not  really 
the  most  important  aspect.  If  we  re-focus  our  view 
of  religious  facts,  we  may  see  that  a  far  bigger  thing 
in  Anglicanism  than  the  historical  elements  defined 
in  the  Lambeth  Quadrilateral  is  the  essential  character 
of  the  Church  as  declared  in  the  Encyclical  Letter  of 
the  Lambeth  Conference  of  1908.  It  is  the  character 
of  Service.  "  How  the  Church,  in  the  Name  of 
Him  to  whom  all  men  are  dear,  may  best  serve  for 
the  true  welfare  and  happiness  of  all^ — this,  through 
all  the  diversity  of  detail,  has  been  the  constant  theme 
of  our  study  and  discussion.  ...  At  the  heart  of 
that  conception  of  the  Church  which  Christ  our  Lord 
has  taught  us  is  the  thought  of  Service.  For  He  came, 
'  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister/  and  a 
Church  is  set  to  portray  and  represent  Him  amongst 
men  ;  to  keep  the  vision  of  Him,  of  His  work,  His 
ways,  before  the  eyes  of  men.  Therefore  the  Church 
must  take  for  its  own  this  central  note  of  His  purpose 
and  His  mission  ;  the  Church  will  be  true  to  its  calUng 
in  proportion  as  it  can  say  to  the  world,  by  word  and 
deed,  by  what  it  refuses  and  by  what  it  claims  :  *  I 
come,  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister  ' ; 


THE   WAY  97 

and  it  must  be  feared  that  the  Church's  forgetfulness 
of  this,  its  obscuring  or  effacing  of  this  central  charac- 
teristic, has  at  times  disastrously  hindered  the  world 
from  recognizing  the  true  nature  and  office  of  the 
Church.  The  power  to  witness  to  Christ  depends  on 
being  like  Him.  Men  will  always  learn  of  Christ 
from  those  whom  they  see  living  with  Christlike  sim- 
pHcity  for  their  sake."  ^  And  as  to  our  connection 
with  the  past,  this  Encyclical  of  our  Bishops  states 
that  "  we  realize  that  the  links  which  bind  us  to  that 
historic  past  are  not  fetters  upon  the  free  and  enter- 
prising spirit  which  is  essential  to  progress.  We  be- 
long to  a  Church  which  ...  is  the  Church  of  free  men, 
educating  them  into  a  knowledge  of  the  liberty  where- 
with Christ  hath  made  them  free."  "  We  must  set 
before  us  the  Church  of  Christ  as  He  would  have  it, 
one  spirit  and  one  body,  enriched  with  all  those  ele- 
ments of  divine  truth  which  the  separated  communities 
of  Christians  now  emphasize  severally,  strengthened 
by  the  interaction  of  all  the  gifts  and  graces  which  our 
divisions  now  hold  asunder,  filled  with  all  the  fulness 
of  God.  W^e  dare  not,  in  the  name  of  peace,  barter 
away  those  precious  things  of  which  we  have  been 
made  stewards.  Neither  can  we  wish  others  to  be 
unfaithful  to  trusts  which  they  hold  no  less  sacred. 
We  must  fix  our  eyes  on  the  Church  of  the  future, 
which  is  to  be  adorned  with  all  the  precious  things, 
both  theirs  and  ours.  We  must  constantly  desire 
not  compromise  but  comprehension,  not  uniformity 
but  unity." 

Such  was  the  vision  of  our  two  hundred  and  forty- 
two  Bishops  in  1908.     But  AngHcanism  remains  out- 

*  Conference  of  Bishops  of  the  Anglican  Comniimion,   1908 
(S.P.C.K.),  pp.  23,  24. 


^8  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

wardly  as  before,  tied  up  in  institutionalism.  Our 
leaders  \vould  lead  us  out  into  the  Way  of  God,  but 
they  have  not  been  able.  We  are  all  alike  :  when  we 
meet  in  the  presence  of  God,  Christ  shows  us  the  Way  ; 
but  then  we  disperse  and  relapse  into  hugging  our  own 
inheritance. 

The  great  usurpation  continues  to  displace  Christ 
from  His  rightful  sovereignty  in  the  Church.  We  are 
the  usurpers,  so  long  as  we  conduct  the  affairs  of  the 
Church  according  to  our  own  stereotyped  ideas,  and 
refuse  to  give  ourselves  up  to  Love.  We  are  usurpers 
if  we  behave  as  present  representatives  of  an  absent 
Christ.  Personal  repentance  of  us  all  is  the  only  way 
out.  We  have  to  apply  to  our  official  Hfe  the  practice  of 
our  private  devotion.  "  We  have  erred  and  strayed 
from  Thy  ways  like  lost  sheep.  We  have  followed  too 
much  the  devices  and  desires  of  our  own  hearts." 

"  O  Love,  I  give  myself  to  Thee 
Thine  ever,  only  Thine  to  be." 

Then  God  can  work,  and  will  work,  as  He  is  working 
already  when  and  where  we  allovv^  Him.  Call  to  wit- 
ness ail  those  who  have  experience  of  the  corporate 
vitahty  and  efhcacy  of  such  conferences  as  the  Pan- 
Anglican,  or  those  held  at  Swanwick.  "  There  was  no 
faintness  of  heart  in  facing  great  questions,  and  no 
narrowness  of  mind  in  deahng  with  them.  The 
genuine  wish  to  work  together  swept  away  all  thoughts 
of  partizanship,  and  brought  instead  the  reality  of 
mutual  understanding.  Minds  and  hearts  were  lifted 
up  on  high,  and  as  from  the  Mount  of  God  men  saw 
visions  of  Service."  This  testimony  of  the  Lambeth 
Encyclical  Letter  to  the  experience  of  the  Pan-Angli- 
can Congress  voices  the  experience  of  multitudes  of 


THE  WAY  99 

us,  at  that  and  at  other  conferences.  What  is  often 
spoken  of  as  the  "  atmosphere  "  of  the  Edinburgh 
Missionary  Conference,  or  of  Swanwick,  or  of  many 
Student  Movement  Conferences,  is  an  experience  of  this 
mighty  power  of  God  in  Christ,  and  a  revelation  of  the 
Way  for  us  to  walk  in.  For  there  men  and  women 
meeting  are  brought  into  a  unity  that  they  had  not 
dreamt  of.  There  the  biggest  problems  are  tackled, 
and  the  Way  begins  to  open  out  through  the  political 
or  ecclesiastical  tangles  which  have  held  us  up.  In  all 
such  experiences  we  need  to  get  beyond  the  thought 
of  the  atmosphere  to  the  thought  of  Christ,  from  the 
impersonal  to  the  personal.  For  it  is  He.  We  are 
not  merely  enjoying  an  atmosphere  which  we  create 
by  warmth  of  numbers.  He  is  the  New  Creator,  not 
we.  We  are  out  on  the  hill-tops,  breathing  the  fresh 
breezes  of  heaven.  We  plunge  into  the  fresh  springs 
of  the  water  of  life.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  our  numbers. 
Throughout  Christendom,  countless  experiences  of  the 
"  two  or  three  "  prove  the  truth  of  Christ.  He  is  the 
Way,  when  men  will  meet.  That  it  is  He  and  not  we 
is  being  realized  most  vividly  and  most  completely 
in  the  Fellowships  of  Silence,  where  through  union  in 
silence  before  God  people  are  led  into  a  unity  of  life 
transcending  any  they  could  attain  by  their  own 
efforts.  ^  We  leave  the  strife  of  tongues  and  find  that 
in  His  Will  is  our  peace  :  ''  to  them  that  beheve,  both 
Jews  and  Greeks,  Christ  the  power  of  God  and  the 
wisdom  of  God." 

For  Christ  is  at  work  among  us,  and  not  only  "  here  " 
or  "  there."  He  is  in  God,  and  therefore  in  the  world  ; 
not  hmited  to  this  or  that  Church  ;    not  limited  to 

^  Cf.  The  Fellowship  of  Silence  ;  also  Fruits  of  Silence, 
by  Cyril  Hepher. 


lOO  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

ecclesiatical  organizations.  He  is  working  in  men  as 
men,  in  all  the  nations,  preparing  them  for  allegiance 
to  His  Kingdom.  We  are  finding  that  conference 
works  better  than  conflict.  In  our  own  country  in 
particular  we  can  already  note  "  the  rapid  growth  of 
reasonable  methods  in  politics.  More  and  more 
questions  are  settled  by  general  agreement  and  with- 
out the  mihtary  pomp  of  a  full-dress  debate."  "  Pro- 
gress is  in  theory,  and  has  been  in  fact,  the  steady 
development  of  the  principle  of  co-operation  and 
fellowship  as  compared  with  that  of  competition  and 
antagonism.  The  acceptance  of  Majority-rule,  as  if 
the  will  of  the  majority  were  the  will  of  all,  is  a  step 
in  that  direction  ;  but  still  more  important  and  sig- 
nificant is  the  gradual  substitution  of  settlement  by 
discussion  in  committees  for  the  official  party-combats 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  Throughout  the  industrial 
and  commercial  world  the  same  tendenc}/  is  observable. 
If  our  labour  disputes  are  nowadays  more  serious  than 
in  the  past,  it  is  precisely  because  both  labour  and 
capital  are  becoming  more  co-operative  and  less  com- 
petitive in  themselves."  ^ 

So  Christ  is  working  His  purpose  out.  And  if  we 
further  look  out  upon  the  British  Empire  and  con- 

1  W.  Temple  on  "The  Nature  of  Government,"  in  Some 
Aspects  of  the  Woman's  Movement,  pp.  153,  154  (Student 
Christian  Movement,  1915).  To  any  persons  still  prepossessed 
by  the  idea  of  party  government,  a  study  of  recent  politics  in 
China  may  be  commended.  In  this  Republic  the  imitation 
of  our  Western  party  system  ruined  the  first  attempt  at  parlia- 
mentary government  and  now  almost  stultifies  the  second. 
That  which  absorbs  the  attention  and  efforts  of  politicians 
i^  the  formation  and  conflicts  of  parties,  while  great  social  and 
economic  miseries  of  the  people  go  unregarded.  Is  it  the 
real  England  that  is  thus  being  followed  ?  Is  this  what 
England's  political  development  means  to  the  world  ? 


THE  WAY  loi 

sider,  as  in  these  days  we  must  needs  consider,  what  it 
is  for,  we  may  dare  to  find  here  too  that  Christ  is 
working  out  His  original  purposes.  "  Our  Empire 
rests  on  hberty  ;  but  this  is  also  the  root  principle,  on 
the  human  side,  of  that  Kingdom  which  Christ  came  to 
proclaim  and  found.  At  the  beginning  of  His  Minis- 
try our  Lord  repudiated  the  only  ways  that  there  are 
of  controlling  men's  conduct  otherwise  than  by  secur- 
ing the  free  allegiance  of  their  hearts  and  wills.  He 
would  not  use  His  power  for  the  satisfaction  of  creature 
comforts  ;  He  would  not  force  men  into  His  obedi- 
ence ;  and  He  would  not  overpower  their  wills  with 
irresistible  evidence.  He  would  not,  that  is  to  say, 
either  bribe  them  or  coerce  them,  or  convince  them 
against  their  will.  But  He  would  live  before  men 
the  life  of  Perfect  Love  and  die  before  them  a  death  of 
Perfect  Love,  so  drawing  them  to  Himself.  In  other 
words.  His  Kingdom  on  its  human  side  rests  on  free- 
dom. There  is,  then,  a  real  affinity  in  root  principle 
between  what  we  call  the  British  Empire  and  the 
Kingdom  of  God  itself.  Our  Empire  has  many  great 
and  glaring  faults  which  need  to  be  purged  away, 
but  it  is  the  first  great  world  structure  which  has 
rested  on  this  spiritual  foundation.  It  is  ready,  as 
no  other  Empire  has  been,  for  the  consecrating  touch." ^ 
The  process  of  the  British  Empire  (may  we  not  say, 
the  process  which  is  the  British  Empire)  is  that  of  the 
larger  Will  to  which  the  latter  wills  submit  while  they 
contribute.  It  is  this  process  which  gives  us  "  the 
problem  of  the  Commonwealth."  "  Our  British  pro- 
blem is  a  bigger,  more  compUcated  one  than  any  the 
Caesars  had  to  deal  with,  for  the  ideal  that  animates 

^  The    Call    of    the    Kingdom,    by    W.    Temple    (National 
Mission  Pamphlets,  A). 


102  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

and  justifies  our  Imperialism  is  that  of  progressive 
self-government. ' ' 

These  problems,  whether  of  Church  or  of  State,  are 
the  problems  of  human  relationship.  What  is  hap- 
pening in  this  modern  world  of  ours  is  the  discovery 
that  we  are  members  of  a  larger  entity,  that  our  life 
is  but  part  of  a  larger  life.  We  have  not  yet  quite 
found  out  what  that  Whole  is  to  which  we  belong,  but 
we  shall  soon  find  out  that  it  is  Christ — He  whose 
service  is  perfect  freedom,  He  in  Whom  we  all  are  one. 
If  I  speak  specially  of  the  British  Empire,  it  is  not  to 
Hmit  Christ  thereto,  but  because  it  is  my  part  as  an 
EngUshman  to  understand  my  own  national  hfe. 
Others  will  know  of  Christ's  working  in  their  national 
Hfe  towards  the  same  end. 

"  The  Lord  has  opened  the  windows  of  Heaven,  and 
has  poured  out  the  Spirit  of  fellowship  upon  us.  And 
that  Spirit  is  amongst  us,  patiently  waiting  until  we 
have  tried  all  other  means,  and  are  v/ilHng  to  cast 
ourselves  upon  His  help.  When  we  are  ready  to  do 
this  we  shall  discover  that  He  can  work  in  ways  that 
are  beyond  our  present  comprehension.  It  will  be 
the  next  Church  movement.  The  call  is  to  go  forward. 
We  may  be  certain  that  a  special  reward  awaits  those 
who  have  the  faith  and  the  daring  to  obey. ' '  ^ 

This  will  be  to  bring  the  Church  into  line  with  the 
great  world  forces  which  are  the  mighty  working  of 
God  ;  it  will  be  to  bring  those  forces  into  the  Church. 
It  has  been  well  said  that  the  problem  before  us  is  not 
that  of  free  Churches  in  a  free  State,  but  of  free  States 
in  a  free  Church.  ^     "  By  its  light  will  the  nations  walk  ; 


1  Christ  and  the  Church,  by  A.  \Y.  Robinson  (S.P.C.K.,  1915). 

2  Church  and  Nation,  by  W.  Temple  (Macmillan,  191 5),  p. 


52. 


THE   WAY  103 

and  into  it  will  the  kings  of  earth  bring  their  glories  ; 
the  gates  of  it  will  never  be  shut  by  day,  and  night 
there  shall  be  none." 

When  we  all  make  this  new  plunge  into  fellowship, 
the  Church  will  be  no  congeries  of  petty  groups,  for  the 
fellowship  is  the  fellowship  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
the  new  life  will  be  one  of  participation  in  the  life  of 
God.  Our  individual  plunge  will  not  imperil  the 
catholicity  of  the  Church  ;  she  will  at  last  be  true  to 
her  character  as  the  Body  of  Christ,  "  welded  together 
and  compacted  by  every  joint  with  which  it  is  sup- 
plied, the  due  activity  of  each  part  enabling  the  Body  to 
grow  and  build  itself  up  in  love  "  (Eph.  iv.  16).  The 
Church  in  each  place  will  be  the  Catholic  Church  in 
miniature.^  The  Christians  in  each  place  will  be  one 
Body,  knowing  that  wherever  men  are  gathered  in 
His  Name,  there  is  He  in  the  midst  of  them.  Then  it 
will  be  seen  that  Church  order  is  the  order  of  love,  the 
order  of  mutual  honour,  of  honour  shown  to  our  con- 
temporaries, but  also  to  our  forefathers  and  theirs  : 
v/ith  a  tender  respect  for  all  that  we  have  inherited 
from  them,  seeing  that  they  with  us  are  alive  in  Christ. 
The  facts  of  the  actual  situation  in  every  place  must  be 
determinative  of  action,  because  we  recognize  facts  as 
God's  acts  ;  and  because  the  whole  modus  operandi 
of  love  is  to  act  on  the  present  facts  without  restraint 
of  prejudice  or  fear.  This  does  not  mean  parochiaHsm, 
not  that  type  of  Congregationalism  which  has  found 


1  See  two  articles  by  Rev.  Herbert  Kelly  in  The  East  and 
the  West,  April  and  July,  191 6,  on  "  The  Pattern  of  a  Mis- 
sionary Church"  and  "The  Pattern  of  the  Early  Church; 
the  Formation  of  the  Ministry  "  (S.P.C.K.).  Cf.  Bishop 
Walpole,  Vital  Religion,  p.  170,  on  local  variations  in  forms  of 
worship. 


104  WHERE  IS   CHRIST? 

out  its  own  inadequacy.  1  For  all  such  narrowness 
rests  on  blindness  to  facts,  or  ignorance  of  what 
others  are  doing  or  have  done,  or  of  our  vital  depend- 
ence on  others,  especially  on  those  who  are  leaders  of 
thought. 

The  Church  will  thus  attain  to  that  unity  in  diversity 
Vt^hich  is  the  essence  of  fellow^ship,  as  it  is  the  essence 
of  Christ's  religion.  Then  religion  will  "  continually 
equal  and  exceed  all  other  interests  by  its  own  per- 
sistent vitality,  its  rich  and  infinite  variety,  its  subtle, 
ever-fresh  attraction  and  inexliaustible  resourcefulness 
and  power."  ^ 

Thus  freed  by  Christ,  because  ruled  by  Him,  the 
Chiirch  will  give  us  "  the  moral  alternative  for  war." 
"  WTien  nations  come  to  understand  the  great  Chris- 
tian adventure,  and  learn  that  in  pursuing  it  they  will 
find  their  own  highest  life,  then  war  will  drop  out  of 
the  world's  hfe  just  as  swords  are  dropped  by  men 
who  want  to  paint,  or  make  music,  or  tend  gardens,  or 
write  poerty.  It  will  seem  so  mean  an  interruption 
to  Hfe's  real  business  that  men  will  refuse  to  debase 
themselves  with  it.  Then,  imieed,  there  will  be  peace  in 
the  smaller  sense,  but  only  because  the  world  will  be 
fuU  of  the  noise  and  the  joy  of  the  warfare  of  God.  It 
is  Christ  and  Christ  alone  who  can  offer  to  men  some- 
thing so  great  that  for  the  sake  of  it  they  will  forego 
the  joy  of  battle."  ^ 

The  Church  will  then  show  that  absolute  respect 
for  personality  which  is  essential  to  the  character  of 
Christ  and  is  the  goal  of  all  self- discipline,  the  ideal  of 

^  See  * '  Congregationalism  and  its  Ideal. ' '  Meredith  Davies. 
Constructive  Quarterly,  September,   191 5. 

*  Von  Hiigel:  cf.  above,  p.  56. 

3  Papers  for  War  Time,  No.  27,  The  Only  Alternatine  to 
War,  A.  Herbert  Gray.     Oxford  University  Press,  1915. 


THE  WAY  105 

modern  education,  the  true  motive  of  all  popular 
movements.  "  There  is  nothing  so  exquisitely  and 
increasingly  sensitive  as  the  Christ  fellowship  or  body, ' ' 
writes  Bishop  Brent.  Utter  respect  for  the  individual 
is  the  antithesis  of  that  impersonal  treatment  of 
people  in  the  mass  which  is  the  ground  of  all  partizan- 
ships  and  wars.  This  impersonal  treatment  of  people 
in  the  mass  is  what  confuses  the  anti-pacifist  argument 
about  defending  the  attacked,  and  muddles  our  minds 
on  the  subject  of  violence.  Violent  resistance  to 
brutal  assault  on  the  weak  is  one  thing  when  you  mean 
the  actual  persons  concerned  ;  quite  another  when 
you  lump  together  myriads  of  guilty  and  innocent 
under  some  imaginary  general  category  which  does 
not  fit  the  facts  of  life.  The  partizan  view  of  men  in 
masses  is  un-Christian  because  it  is  untrue.  There 
is  no  room  for  party  organization  in  the  CathoHc 
Church  of  Christ. 

In  the  CathoHc  Church  of  Christ  the  riddle  of  death 
will  be  solved,  not  merely  doctrinally,  but  practically. 
For  when  the  Church  comes  back  to  the  way  of  love 
we  shall  know  what  the  Communion  of  Saints  means. 
We  shall  be  quiet  enough,  unhurried  enough,  sensitive 
enough,  to  realize  our  spiritual  environment ;  we  shall 
have  time  and  attention  for  our  friends  whom  we  set 
down  as  "  lost."  We  shall  perceive  that  "  death  sets 
powers  free  so  that  presence  may  be  extended.  This 
is  not  a  speculative  assertion,  but  a  fact  of  history 
capped  by  the  common  experience  of  men  of  to-day. 
.  .  .  The  presence  not  only  abides,  but  continues  to 
operate  here  in  a  refined  manner.  It  is  not  that  it 
alters  its  mode  of  operation,  but  that  we  who  remain 
perceive  that  which  was  hitherto  only  partially  appar- 
ent to  us.     We  often  attribute  influence  to    the    in- 


io6  WHERE   IS   CHRIST? 

cidentals  of  personality  instead  of  to  the  eternized 
personality  which  death  unveils."  ^ 

By  throwing  ourselves  on  Christ  we  can  enter  into 
that  communion  of  saints  ;  we  can  enter  into  the  full 
life  and  powers  of  the  Church  which  is  His  Body. 
Why  let  our  institutions  or  our  prejudices  hold  us 
back  from  this  glorious  consummation  for  which  the 
whole  world  waits  ? 

St.  Paul  had  vision  to  see  that  the  Jewish  Law  had 
served  as  a  tutor  to  bring  Israel  to  Christ.  To-day  we 
should  likewise  see  that  all  the  various  systems  of  the 
Churches  have  now  made  it  possible  for  us  all  to  enter 
into  the  liberty  of  fellowship  in  Christ.  We  have 
been  "  under  guardians  and  stewards  until  the  time 
appointed  of  the  Father  "  :  now  He  calls  us  to  enter 
on  the  privileges  of  sons. 

That,  we  must  repeat,  does  not  mean  giving  up  our 
sacraments.  That  would  be  contrary  to  the  whole 
argument  of  this  book.  It  would  certainly  be  contrary 
to  the  meaning  and  practice  of  St.  Paul.  Sonship  to 
him  meant  enrichment,  not  impoverishment,  "  All 
things  are  yours."  As  sons  we  are  freed  from  pre- 
judice, our  sympathies  are  broadened,  we  can  be  "  all 
things  to  all  men,"  true  to  ourselves,  but  able  to  enter 
into  the  life  of  others.  I  have  never  yet  communicated 
except  as  an  AngHcan,  under  the  Anghcan  rite  :  but 
why  should  I  not,  under  this  reahzation  of  sonship  ? 

What  becomes  of  the  sacraments  if  we  relax  our 
disciplinary  restrictions  ?  They  become  what  they 
are,  not  memorials  of  the  Dead,  but  actions  of  the 
Living  ;  not  symbols  of  an  absent  Christ,  but  tokens  of 
His  Presence  ;    just  as  with  other  friends  the  hand- 

*  Bishop  Brent,  Presence. 


THE  WAY  107 

shake  or  the  kiss  are  an  acknowledgment  of  present 
union.  ^ 

Christian  baptism  was  originally  a  real  entry  into 
a  real  Hfe,  a  transition  from  one  society  into  another, 
actual  incorporation  into  the  Christian  fellowship. 
Later  it  became  a  rite  in  itself,  as  applied  to  an 
individual  apart  from  any  real  entry  into  fellowship. 
If  we  restore  the  Christian  fellowship,  the  sacraments 
will  again  be  matters  not  of  theological  speculation, 
but  of  immediate  fact  ;   the  focus  of  all  social  effort. 

The  constant  peril  of  religion  is  petrifaction  ;  the 
substitution  of  one  legalism  for  another,  a  Christian 
law  for  a  Judaic,  a  Protestant  for  a  Catholic.  Psy- 
chology, like  other  sciences,  dissolves  the  arbitrary 
distinctions,  and  reveals  the  real  processes  of  life  and 
death,  whether  operative  through  circumcision,  or 
through  baptism,  or  through  any  other  rite.  But 
that  impartiality  of  science  is  what  we  religious  people 
so  grievously  lack.  St.  Paul's  call  to  sonship  thus 
comes  home  to  us  to-day,  recalling  us  to  personal 
relationship  to  the  Father  of  all. 

"  My  one  thought  is,  by  forgetting  what  lies  behind 
me  and  straining  to  what  lies  before  me,  to  press  on 
to  the  goal  for  the  prize  of  God's  high  call  in  Christ 
Jesus.  For  all  those  of  our  number  who  are  mature 
this  must  be  the  point  of  view  ;  God  will  reveal  that 
to  any  of  you  who  look  at  things  differently.  Only 
we  must  let  our  steps  be  guided  by  such  truth  as  we 
have  attained.  "2 

*'  I  am  the  Way."     The  Way  is  well  known  in  the 

1  "  Our  hope  rests  not  on  Institutions,  nor  on  Sacraments, 
but  on  a  Person,  and  He  is  very  near."  The  Dean  of  West- 
minster, in  the  National  Mission,  November,  1916. 

-  Phil.  iii.   13-16. 


io8  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

Church,  though  the  Church  does  not  yet  walk  in  it.     It 
is  the  vision  of  all  our  prophets,  though  obscured  by 
aU  us  priests.     Our  prophets  indeed  have  most  of  them 
been  also  priests  :    there  need  be   no   antagonism   or 
antipathy  between  these  two  functions  of  the  Church's 
ministry :     but   it    is    as   prophets,    interpreting   the 
present    and   revealing   the    future,    rather   than    as 
authorized    exponents    of    the    past    that    our    great 
teachers  have  taught  us.     West  cot  t  and  Hort  were 
such — teachers   to   whom    the    Church   has   not    yet 
listened,  men  to  whose  vision  we  have  not  opened  our 
eyes.     "  That  which  hath  been  is  and  ever  will  be. 
If  the  Presence  of  Christ  seem  in  some  sense  to  be  taken 
from  us  in  these  later  days,   the  apparent  removal 
calls  out  a  blessing  never  before  given.     Each  move- 
ment,   each    semblance,    of    separation    becomes    for 
believers  the  revelation  of  Divine  Majesty.     The  words 
written  of  the  first  disciples  will  be  found  true  of  every 
disciple  in  every  age  :   He  led  them  out  until  they  were 
over  against  Bethany — out  of  the  sacred  precincts  which 
enclosed  all  that  they  held  most  sacred,  past  the  scene 
of  the  Agony  and  the  scene  of  the  Weeping — and  He 
lifted  up  His  hands  and  blessed  them.     And  it  came  to 
pass  while  He  blessed  them,  He  parted  from  them,  and 
was  carried  up  into  heaven.     And  they  worshipped  Him 
.and  returned  to  Jerusalem — returned,  having  lost  the 
Lord  from  their  sight  that  they  might  have  Him  for 
ever — with  great  joy  ;     and   were    continually   in   the 
Temple,    blessing    God.*'  ^    So    Bishop    Westcott    ex- 
pressed his  own  faith  in  the  Risen  Lord  :  "  We  require, " 
he  said,  "to  be  taken  up  out  of  our  little  circle  of 
strifes  and  questionings,  as  it  were,  into  the  mountain, 

1  Westcott,  Revelation  of  the  Risen  Lord,  pp.  183,  184  ;   and 
passim. 


THE  WAY  109 

that  so  we  may  regard  our  King  in  His  glory,  as  He 
has  there  revealed  Himself.  It  is  not  by  narrowing 
our  vision  or  our  sympathy,  by  fixing  our  eyes  on  that 
which  is  congenial  to  our  feelings,  by  excluding  from 
our  interest  whole  regions  of  Christendom,  that  we 
can  gain  the  repose  of  faith.  We  must  dare  to  look 
on  the  broad  and  chequered  aspect  of  life."  ^ 

Dr.  Hort  too  writes  of  Christ  as  the  Way.-  "As 
He  who  had  been  leading  a  chosen  few  along  a  way 
which  He  shared  with  them  revealed  Himself  in  that 
hour  as  the  one  universal  Way,  so  the  same  revelation, 
when  understood  and  embraced  in  its  full  breadth, 
delivers  His  Church  from  helpless  dependence  on  any 
partial  tokens  or  recognitions  of  His  guidance.  It 
beckons  onward  not  to  some  laxer  and  feebler  form  of 
allegiance  to  Him  as  safer  and  more  lasting ;  but  to 
a  faith  in  Him,  and  in  the  treasures  hidden  in  Him, 
both  deeper  and  wider  in  itself,  and  more  complete 
in  its  mastery  over  our  whole  nature,  than  any  to 
which  we  have  yet  attained.  It  is  not  ill  but  well  for 
the  Church  that  some  temporal  and  external  character- 
istics which  marked  the  time  of  probation  and  appren- 
ticeship should  vanish,  even  though  we  can  scarcely 
distinguish  their  loss  from  the  loss  of  Him  to  whom 
for  long  centuries  they  have  borne  witness.  If  He 
takes  away  any  familiar  signs  of  His  presence,  it  is 
because  they  are  becoming  hindrances  to  the  ripening 
of  discipleship.  New  knowledge  of  Him  has  to  be 
learned  :  new  works  for  Him  have  to  be  undertaken. 
It  is  His  own  voice  which  bids  us  '  arise  and  go  hence,' 
that  we  may  find  Him  and  follow  Him  elsewhere." 

The  words  of  the  prophets  are  useless  unless  we  lay 


^  Westcott,  Revelation  of  the  Risen  Lord,  pp.  162,  16 
2  Hort,  The  Way,  the  Truth,  the  Life,  pp.  33,  34. 


no  WHERE  IS  CHRIST? 

them  to  our  hearts.  God  grant  that  we  may  take 
time  to  meditate  on  such  words  as  these  just  quoted. 

"  We  do  therefore  solemnly  enjoin  upon  pastors 
and  preachers  that  their  first  duty  is  to  retire  periodi- 
cally within  the  veil,  and  walk  with  God,  in  order  to 
come  forth  and  proclaim  His  clear  revelation  of  Him- 
self made  through  the  ages  ;  and  to  re-affirm  in  this 
our  day  of  distress  that  He  understands  and  rules  the 
race  which  He  shaped  with  His  own  Hand,  and  with 
which  He  irrevocably  identified  Himself  when  He 
became  the  Son  of  Man  ' '  (Pastoral  letter  of  the  Ameri- 
can Bishops,  General  Convention,  1916). 

To  attempt  here  to  map  out  the  way  would  be  to 
stultify  the  argument  of  this  book.  The  whole  point 
is  that  we  none  of  us  know,  but  that  we  can  know  as 
we  go  if  we  unite  in  Him.  But  since  the  Way  is  He, 
and  we  all  know  something  of  Him,  we  can  outline 
some  of  the  features  ;  and  that  we  have  been  trying 
to  do  in  these  few  pages. 

Do  we  still  feel  that  the  programme  is  too  vague  ? 
So  too  is  that  of  lovers  at  their  marriage,  if  mutual 
trust  is  vagueness  :  if  their  dispensing  with  detailed 
drafts  of  future  action  is  vagueness.  If  we  at  once 
repudiate  the  charge  as  levelled  against  any  such 
true  lovers,  we  may,  with  equal  vigour  repudiate  it  as 
levelled  against  that  other  Married  Couple,  Christ  and 
the  Church.  Indeed,  all  who  know  anything  about 
love  and  faith  know  that  these  involve  a  "  setting  out, 
not  knowing  whither  they  are  going." 

I  loved  to  choose  and  see  my  path,  but  now 

Lead  Thou  me  on, 
I  do  not  ask  to  see 
The  distant  scene  ;    one  step  enough  lor  me. 

And  I  heard  as  it  were  the  voice  of  a  great  multitude, 


THE  WAY  III 

and  as  the  voice  of  many  waters,  and  as  the  voice  of 
mighty  thunders,  saying,  Hallelujah  :  for  the  Lord 
our  God,  the  Almighty,  reigneth.  Let  us  rejoice  and 
be  exceeding  glad,  and  let  us  give  the  glory  unto  Him  : 
for  the  marriage  of  the  Lamb  is  come,  and  His  wife 
hath  made  herself  ready. 

Blessed  are  they  which  are  bidden  to  the  marriage 
supper  of  the  Lamb, 


112  WHERE    IS   CHRIST? 


POSTSCRIPT 

THE  whole  point  of  the  foregoing  pages  Hes  in 
action,  here  and  now.  The  actions  required 
of  me  as  a  priest  are  actions  of  repentance  :  in  view  of 
the  condition  of  the  Church  and  of  the  world  to-day, 
such  actions  alone  can  be  actions  ol  hope.  I  have 
said  that  we  cannot  lay  down  a  detailed  programme  for 
the  future  of  the  Church,  for  that  is  her  Lord's  con- 
cern. But  it  is  essential  for  each  of  us  to  lay  down  a 
definite  programme  for  himself,  that  we  may  come 
into  line  with  Him.  "  The  transition,  I  fear,  will  not 
be  without  much  pain,"  said  Archbishop  Temple  (see 
above,  chap.  VI,  p.  71)  ;  but  our  repentance  will  be 
worthless  without  that  pain.  We  have  to  put  into 
practice  our  new^  vision  of  God  :  knowing  that  to  quarrel 
is  to  put  Christ  from  us,  to  love  is  His  embrace.  Christ 
is  not  divided.  If  I  am  living,  or  teaching,  or  wor- 
shipping in  separation  from  fellow- Christians,  in  the 
ending  of  that  separation  Hes  my  way  of  repentance 
and  of  hope. 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  Butler  &  Tanner,  Frome  and  London. 


Princeton  Theological ,  SfSi" JX-kSSff 


1012  01250  8232 


DATE  DUE 

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